Preamble

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — NATIONAL WAR EFFORT

Cotton Industry

Mr. Burke: asked the Minister of Labour whether he is aware of a shortage of labour in certain sections of the cotton industry and what proposals he has for dealing with the matter?

The Minister of Labour (Mr. Ernest Bevin): In the early part of this year there was a shortage of labour in the spinning section of the cotton textile industry. Special steps were taken to increase the labour force, and as a result about 5,000 persons have been placed in or returned to the industry during the past six months. The labour requirements of the industry are at present under review in connection with the existing and prospective demands on the industry for production.

Mr. Burke: Has my right hon. Friend any proposals for making the cotton industry more attractive to possible entrants or re-entrants? Is he aware of the statement made the other day by the Minister of Fuel and Power that he had taken action to make miners' wages more comparable with those in other industries? Can my right hon. Friend do something similar for the cotton industry?

Mr. Bevin: I understand that the whole question of wages in the industry is under review.

Industrial Arrangements (Trade Union Representation)

Mr. William Brown: asked the Minister of Labour whether, in taking account of the terms of well established industrial arrangements which he has power to accept as an alternative to the machinery of appeal under the Essential Work Order, he will ensure that all unions are

given equal rights of representation in respect of their own members within the established machinery, before he decides that it is a suitable alternative?

Mr. Bevin: No, Sir; it would not be practicable for me to give such an undertaking.

Mr. Brown: In view of the importance of the principle involved, I beg to give notice that I will raise this matter on the Adjournment at the first opportunity.

Wage Rates

Mr. Mander: asked the Minister of Labour the lowest rate of wage fixed by any trade board at the present time?

Mr. Bevin: The lowest general minimum time rates are 1s. 0¼d. per hour for adult male workers in the fustian cutting trade and 7d. per hour for female workers in the drift nets mending trade. I should, however, point out in both trades piece work predominates and minimum rates for piece work have also been fixed.

Mr. Mander: Will my right hon. Friend consider the advisability of adopting a minimum rate and making it the national statutory minimum for the whole country below which it would be illegal for any person to be employed?

Mr. Bevin: I should want notice of that question.

Dock Scheme (Surplus Workers)

Mr. Graham White: asked the Minister of Labour whether men, surplus to the Dock Scheme in operation on Merseyside and elsewhere, on the day of the count are included in the monthly unemployment returns?

Mr. Bevin: So far as such men, though not actually at work, remain in the employment of, and are in receipt of remuneration from an employer, as is the case with the majority, they are not included in the returns as unemployed.

Arts Students

Mr. Edmund Harvey: asked the Minister of Labour whether arts students at universities and university colleges and approved institutions who are in medical groups of grade 3 or a lower grade will be allowed to continue their studies under appropriate conditions?

Mr. Bevin: Yes, Sir. The arrangements must necessarily be subject to variation from time to time, and I contemplate that they should correspond generally with those applicable to women students.

Ship Repair Workers (Electrical Trades)

Mr. Martin: asked the Minister of Labour whether his attention has been drawn to the inequality in the wage rates for ship-repair workers in electrical trades in different districts; and whether, since this bears hardly on workers transferred from one district to another, he will take some steps to adjust the situation?

Mr. Bevin: The rates in operation in the various districts are those agreed between the two sides of the industry, and any readjustment is a matter for negotiation through the appropriate machinery.

Retail Non-Food Distributive Trades (Women)

Mr. Butcher: asked the Minister of Labour whether he is now in a position to make a statement regarding further withdrawals of labour from the retail non-food distributive trades?

Mr. Bevin: In view of the number of women urgently required for the Services and for vital war industry, I have decided, in agreement with my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade, and after consultation with the Central Advisory Panel for the Retail Distributive Trades (other than food and coal) that, in addition to the withdrawals which have already taken place, all women born on or after 1st January, 1907, should be withdrawn from those trades, and that in certain specified sections of the industry—a list of which I am arranging to have circulated in the OFFICIAL REPORT—the withdrawal should extend to women born on or after 1st January, 1897. A limited period of retention up to six months may be granted to women whose withdrawal would result in the closing down of the business or branch of the business in which they are employed. It will be further open to an employee to represent that exceptional hardship, which may include hardship to the employer, would result from the withdrawal. Such cases will be considered by the Ministry or, on an appeal, by a Local Appeal Board in the light of decisions given by the Umpire under the National Service

(Postponement Certificates) Regulations. Employees making representations on hardship grounds, will be informed that they may appeal to the local appeal board and may be accompanied to the hearing at the board by their employers.

Mr. Butcher: While thanking the right hon. Gentleman for that reply, may I ask whether he can give an assurance that sufficient labour will be left, particularly in rural areas, to enable distribution of essential goods to be carried on? Further, will he direct his officers to give special attention to the claims of one-man businesses and other small concerns?

Mr. Bevin: As I said the other day, I cannot give assurances to anybody, in the light of the present war situation. Any pledges I gave might be misinterpreted and might lead to an improper balance between the claims of one and the other. I can, however, assure the hon. Gentleman that the question will be dealt with on its merits and I think quite fairly.

Mr. Rhys Davies: In view of the importance of this subject, may I ask my right hon. Friend whether he has seen a Motion on the Order Paper to-day calling attention to the whole problem of manpower in the distributive trades? Can he facilitate a Debate on the subject?

Following is the list:

Sections of the Retail Distributive Trades (other than Food and Coal) from which women born on or after 1st January, 1897, will be withdrawn.

Hearth furniture and ornamental brassware.
Domestic lighting fittings.
Bathroom fittings.
Wallpaper.
Paints and colourmans' wares.
Flowers.
Floral accessories and garden furniture.
Pet animals.
Cutlery, including spoons and forks.
Brushes and brooms.
Polishes and cleaning materials.
Sports goods.
Toys and games.
Handbags, shopping bags and gasmask containers.
Umbrellas and walking sticks.
Musical instruments (including pianos), domestic electrical goods and appliances, other than radio sets and parts.
Baskets and basketware.
Picture frames and art goods.
Stationery and stationers' wares.
Tobacco, cigarettes and smokers' requisites.
Cosmetics, toilet preparations and toilet requisites.
Fancy goods, including leather fancy goods.
Glassware.


Jewellery, including silversmiths' and goldsmiths' work.
Artificial jewellery and badges.
Clocks and watches.
Photographic goods and appliances.
Soft furnishing (except black-out estimators).
Fancy linens.
Fancy drapery.
Furs.
Headwear for men or women.
Antiques.
Newspapers and periodicals.
Chocolate and sugar confectionery, when combined with the substantial sale of any other commodity included in this list.
Women wholly or mainly engaged in the pledge departments of pawnbrokers' establishments, in beauty treatment (including manicuring), or as mannequins, window dressers, shop walkers, shop guides and lift girls.

Omnibus Drivers, Lincolnshire (Wages)

Mr. Kendall: asked the Minister of Labour whether he is aware that the wage rates in force for omnibus drivers in the Lincolnshire area are lower than those of unskilled labourers in the same area, and are likely to give rise to an industrial dispute unless remedied; and, as discussions with representatives of the National Union of Railwaymen have shown them to be in sympathy with the complaints of these omnibus workers but require his support, what action does he propose to take?

Mr. Bevin: I have nothing to add to the answer given to my hon. Friend on 9th December.

Mr. W. Brown: As this has already given rise to one strike and a number of prosecutions, does the Minister propose to wait until there is another strike before he does anything?

Mr. Bevin: Because there is one strike it does not of necessity mean that another will follow. The union must deal with the problem.

Corn Threshing Industry

Mr. Price: asked the Minister of Labour whether, in order to ensure regular working, he has applied, or intends to apply, the Essential Work Order to the corn-threshing industry?

Mr. Bevin: No, Sir. I have consulted my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture on this question, and he agrees with me that the application of the Essential Work Order is not at present necessary.

Mr. Price: Is my right hon. Friend aware that in some districts there is serious delay in threshing on farms, for this very reason? Has he any information on that subject?

Mr. Bevin: No, Sir, I have not heard of it.

Mr. De la Bère: It is so; it is very real.

Work Stoppage (Home Counties)

Major Petherick: asked the Minister of Labour whether he can make any statement on the one-day strike in one of the Vickers works in the Home Counties on 14th December?

Mr. Bevin: A brief stoppage of work took place in connection with proposed changes in the arrangements for supplying the workpeople with tea. Work was resumed on the same day, and further discussions are to take place before the new arrangements are introduced.

Technical Personnel Committee

Mr. Kenneth Lindsay: asked the Minister of Labour who are the members of the Technical Personnel Committee and what are their functions?

Mr. Bevin: I would refer my hon. Friend to the reply given to the hon. Member for London University (Sir E. Graham-Little) on 26th November.

Mr. Lindsay: I did put this Question down for the Lord President of the Council, but perhaps my right hon. Friend can say whether the Committee reports direct to him or to the War Cabinet. Also, will he give the names of the members of the Committee?

Mr. Bevin: The persons serving on it are principally officers from the different Departments, drawn from the technical staffs. I will consider whether I can circulate the names. The Committee report to me.

Mr. Lindsay: Is there a university representative on it?

Mr. Bevin: No, Sir. I do not think there is. That is why it is so successful.

Factory Workers (Transport Facilities)

Mr. Granville: asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of War Transport whether transport facilities have


now improved in the town previously notified to him; how many fresh omnibuses have been put on; whether a larger omnibus depôt is to be established there consistent with the industrial needs of the district; and whether the local factory engaged on war production has been asked by the transport company for a lump-sum guarantee in order to extend essential war transport services?

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of War Transport (Mr. Noel-Baker): In accordance with the offer made more than two weeks ago to the management of the factory in question by the Regional Transport Commissioner, the two existing omnibus services have been expanded. The time tables have been revised to cater more effectively for the shift workers, and a small additional mileage is being run. In the same offer, the Regional Transport Commissioner promised to put on additional vehicles for the morning and evening shifts, provided the factory management would guarantee a reasonable payment for the service. We are still awaiting the decision of the management on this proposal.

Mr. Granville: Is it necessary for the employers to guarantee a lump sum before these buses will be put on?

Mr. Noel-Baker: If the transport authorities are asked to put on a new service, I think it is desirable that there should be a reasonable financial arrangement.

Oral Answers to Questions — CIVIL DEFENCE

Women Wardens (Accommodation)

Mr. McEntee: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he is aware that the Regional Commissioners for the London Civil Defence Region are refusing approval for the provision of separate lavatory accommodation for women wardens, when it is the policy of his Department that separate accommodation must be provided for women engaged in fire-watching at business premises; and whether he will see that separate lavatory accommodation is made for women wardens?

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Herbert Morrison): I am not aware that there has been any refusal to authorise separate provision where the need is established. The numbers on duty

are smaller and other circumstances differentiate wardens' posts from business premises.

Mr. McEntee: Does my right hon. Friend think it right that the people who forgather all night at these posts should not have separate accommodation?

Mr. Morrison: The numbers are very small, and accommodation is often restricted. To provide separate accommodation would involve a considerable amount of labour which is not available. After all, there is no difficulty about this when private families are visited by their friends.

Personnel (Alternative Part-Time Employment)

Captain Peter Macdonald: asked the Home Secretary whether, in view of the long period which has passed without serious air-raids on this country, he will consider the desirability of allowing Civil Defence workers to engage more freely in other part-time services in connection with the war?

Mr. H. Morrison: I presume my hon. and gallant Friend is hot referring to part-time Civil Defence personnel. A large amount of useful work is being done by the greatly reduced number of those necessarily retained for whole-time duty in the Civil Defence Services. But I agree with my hon. and gallant Friend that there is room for improvement and I am already considering how certain difficulties that have arisen in the working of existing arrangements can best be dealt with.

Black-out Period

Mr. Tinker: asked the Home Secretary whether he will consider the lackout time in the morning as, if this could be reduced, it would lead to saying of fuel?

Mr. H. Morrison: The black-out period corresponds generally with the hours of darkness, and shortening this period would therefore be unlikely to lead to any substantial saving of fuel.

Mr. Tinker: Would it not be possible to save fuel if people could put up their blinds earlier in the morning rather than have, to wait for the present regulation time?

Mr. Morrison: I saw the hon. Member's point. It is, of course, one of the diffi-


culties that when we adjusted the hour at night we suffered for it, in a way, in the morning. Although I agree that there is a slight margin of twilight, so to speak, or early dawn, I do not think that any material saving of fuel would result from the adoption of the suggestion that has been made.

Detainees

Sir Irving Albery: asked the Home Secretary whether he will give Members of this House, on request, the names of any of their constituents who continue to be detained under Regulation 18B contrary to the recommendation of the Advisory Committee?

Mr. H. Morrison: No, Sir. I regret that I am not prepared to comply with this request.

Sir I. Albery: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that his reply prevents a Member of the House from carrying out what is part of his proper duties to a constituent, and that to refuse that permission is to treat the House with contempt?

Mr. Morrison: I do not agree at all. I resent any suggestion that I treat the House with contempt. I am responsible to the House; I accept that responsibility. I do not think it is right that this should be done, as I think it would lead to a good deal of confusion.

Mr. Mander: Is it not the case that any of these persons detained can, if they think fit, communicate with their Members of Parliament?

Mr. Morrison: That is so, and I assure the hon. Member that they often do.

Unoccupied Business Premises (Fire Risk)

Mr. Brooke: asked the Home Secretary whether he is aware that a special fire risk arises where business premises that have been damaged are completely boarded up, if no fire guard is in the premises and where it is impossible to see from the street a fire which takes hold inside; and whether he will provide that the boarding up must be so done that if such a fire occurs it can be detected from the outside?

Mr. H. Morrison: I recognise the special nature of the fire hazards presented by unoccupied business premises, and I propose

shortly to introduce measures to deal with this subject.

Surface Shelters, London (Closure)

Major Sir Adrian Baillie: asked the Home Secretary how many surface shelters are being closed in the London County Council area and in the various local government self-contained areas touching the Metropolis, respectively?

Mr. H. Morrison: Proposals to close a number of surface shelters in the London Civil Defence Region are before the Regional Commissioners and the shelters concerned are being individually examined by the Regional staff with a view to deciding in each case whether the contemplated closure would be justified. This survey is now in progress and I regret I am not yet in a position to give the desired figures.

Solicitor and Client

Mr. Boothby: asked the Home Secretary whether his attention has been called to the observations of Lord Justice Goddard in the case of Arbon versus Anderson and Others, on the subject of the relationship between solicitor and client; and whether he proposes to take any action in the matter?

Mr. H. Morrison: As I have indicated in replies to previous Questions on this subject, this is a matter in which conflicting considerations arise. The persons detained under the Regulation are of differing types and include from time to time persons suspected of being enemy agents. In addition, therefore, to the considerations mentioned by the learned Judge there are also considerations of national security to which I must give due weight. I am, however, reviewing the whole policy in the light of the observations made by his Lordship.

Mr. Boothby: In making this review, will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind that the learned Judge pointed out that all ordinary prisoners had the right or consultation and communication with their solicitors and that this right is violated only in the case of people who are detained?

Mr. Morrison: I am aware of what the learned Judge said on this point, but there are considerations about these cases which distinguish them from ordinary prisoners.

Oral Answers to Questions — PUBLIC MEETING, HOLBORN

Commander Locker-Lampson: asked the Home Secretary whether his attention has been drawn to a meeting, on Sunday, 6th December, organised by a body calling itself the 18B Committee, in Holborn Hall, at which Mosley's name was cheered, "Perish Judah" shouted, and the Fascist salute taken; whether he is watching the subversive activities of this organisation; and what he proposes doing?

Mr. H. Morrison: I would refer my hon. and gallant Friend to the answer which was given to a similar Question asked by the hon. Member for East Wolverhampton (Mr. Mander) on 15th December.

Mr. Gallacher: Is the Minister aware that the body responsible for this meeting has now sent out a circular letter to many Members of Parliament which is typical Goebbels propaganda?

Mr. Morrison: I welcome the recruitment of my hon. Friend to the ranks of law and order. He may be sure that I shall keep a very close watch on this body, but I beg him not to get in a state of neurosis about it too early.

Oral Answers to Questions — EDUCATION

Juvenile Delinquency

Mr. Graham White: asked the President of the Board of Education whether, having regard to the anxiety felt concerning the question of juvenile delinquency and in view of the success attending the measures which the Board of Education and the local education authorities have taken during the war to promote the care and welfare of temperamentally difficult children, he will consider the advisability of bringing this latter type of provision more closely into relationship with that of the Home Office in respect of delinquent children?

The President of the Board of Education (Mr. Butler): In considering measures for the care of temperamentally difficult children, my Department are keeping in close touch with the Home Office. The joint circular issued by the Departments in June, 1941, a copy of which I am sending to the hon. Member, included suggestions that the juvenile courts should avail themselves of the

facilities provided by local education authorities through child guidance clinics and otherwise. My right hon. Friend and I are anxious that these facilities should be used to the full and extended so far as is practicable in the present circumstances.

Mr. Thorne: Is the right hon. Gentleman prepared to advise the local education authorities to persuade all boys and girls to join the different clubs, as this would put an end to a great deal of juvenile crime?

Mr. Butler: The hon. Member will realise that the youth services are being carried out as extensively as possible under the ægis of the local authorities. I am satisfied this influence is gradually being extended.

Mr. Lindsay: As the peak age for juvenile delinquency is 11 or 12, will the right hon. Gentleman extend the playing centres for children under school age?

Mr. Butler: I am aware that that is the age, or slightly older, when the peak comes, but I should require notice of the hon. Gentleman's Question.

State Scholarships

Mr. Lindsay: asked the President of the Board of Education whether it is proposed to continue the award of State scholarships; how many will be available in the coming year; and whether they will be held over for those who are called up for war service?

Mr. Butler: The answer to the first and third parts of the Question is in the affirmative. The number of State scholarships to be awarded in the coming year will be decided when the number of entrants to the Higher Certificate Examinations, on the results of which these scholarships are awarded, is known.

Oral Answers to Questions — RURAL DISTRICT COUNCILS

Mr. Hannah: asked the Minister of Health whether he can give an undertaking that rural district councils will not be abolished without giving local government electors an opportunity of expressing their opinion?

The Minister of Health (Mr. Ernest Brown): While I am aware that in some quarters there have been suggestions for


an alteration in the present system of local government which would involve abolishing rural district councils, I can assure my hon. Friend that no such suggestions will be adopted by the Government for submission to Parliament without the fullest opportunity for those councils and the communities they represent to make their views felt.

Mr. Hannah: While thanking my right hon. Friend very much for that reply, do the Government realise the very great importance of local government to our institutions?

Mr. Brown: Yes, Sir, and of all democratic institutions.

Oral Answers to Questions — PUBLIC HEALTH

Panel Doctors' Certificates (Charge)

Mr. Higgs: asked the Minister of Health whether the regulations permit medical practitioners to make a charge to panel patients for the issue of doctors' certificates for ill-health when these are demanded by an employer?

Mr. E. Brown: Insurance medical practitioners are required to give medical certificates only for the purposes of the National Health Insurance Acts. They are not forbidden to give and charge for certificates required for other purposes.

Mr. Higgs: Is the Minister aware that these charges are being made, and that often they are as much as 1s. or 2s. 6d. for each certificate, and is he aware that this is a serious burden on low wage-earners?

Mr. Brown: Perhaps the hon. Member will give me some information about the matter from his angle. I have stated what the law is.

Mr. Higgs: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the charges are being made and will he make provision to stop them?

Mr. Buchanan: In the case where a man is a member of an approved society, for which he needs one health certificate, and also a member of a friendly society, for which he needs another, will the Minister make some arrangement for a copy of the certificate to be granted and so save great expense?

Mr. Brown: I will look into that point.

Insulin

Mr. George Griffiths: asked the Minister of Health what arrangements exist outside the Poor Law for enabling persons suffering from diabetes to obtain insulin free or at reduced prices?

Mr. E. Brown: A person who is insured under the National Health Insurance Acts is entitled, to obtain insulin as a part of his medical benefit if it is prescribed by the doctor attending him. Local education authorities may provide insulin free or at reduced rates for children and young persons attending schools and educational institutions if the necessary sanction to this arrangement has been obtained. A general sanction is now being given. Local authorities have power with my approval to provide temporary supplies of insulin for the poorer inhabitants of their districts. I am issuing a circular drawing attention to this power and conveying my approval to its exercise for the period of the war, and I will send my hon. Friend a copy.

Mr. Griffiths: The right hon. Gentleman stated at the end of his reply that diabetics may be enabled to get their insulin free or at reduced prices from local authorities, but would it not be possible for the Minister to arrange for them to obtain it from the county councils, for then it would be spread over the entire county instead of coming from the urban district council or the rural district council? If that were possible, I would thank the right hon. Gentleman very much for this Christmas box to the diabetics.

Mr. Brown: I hope the hon. Member will thank me for the Christmas box, anyway, but I am sorry to say it is not possible to accept his suggestion, as county councils are not among the authorities who can exercise this power under the law.

Invalids (Milk Allowance)

Sir Robert Young: asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food whether he is aware that there are a number of diseases and physical conditions of patients, not stated in Group 1 or 2, for which doctors think a liberal supply of milk is necessary; and whether he will make arrangements whereby patients who are not covered by Group 1 list of diseases but are considered to be permanently ill can have two pints of


milk per day provided the need for such an allowance of milk is certified by his or her doctor?

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food (Mr. Mabane): I am aware that certain doctors hold the view suggested by my hon. Friend. The comparative needs of different groups of people for liquid milk, including persons suffering from various diseases, have been most carefully considered in conjunction with the Food Rationing (Special Diets) Advisory Committee of the Medical Research Council. In view of the supply position and the need for maintaining at least a small supply for the healthy population, it has been possible to grant full priority only to those for whom a liberal supply of milk is a therapeutic necessity, and a smaller priority allowance to those for whom a moderate amount of milk is necessary. In the circumstances my Noble Friend would not feel justified in extending priority to other classes of temporary or permanent invalids for whom additional supplies of milk can only be regarded as a comfort and not a necessity.

Sir R. Young: Is my hon. Friend aware that in cases of this kind a liberal supply of milk is judged to be necessary by the doctor in attendance, on the patient and should the special knowledge of the doctor be ruled out by the Committee?

Mr. Mabane: As my hon. Friend knows, doctors do not always take the same view, and we must be guided by the decisions of the Special Diets Advisory Committee and the Medical Research Council. We must have some central body to guide us, and we must act in uniformity throughout the country in accordance with their advice.

Oral Answers to Questions — AGRICULTURE

Workers' Cottages

Mr. Granville: asked the Minister of Health what steps he proposes to take to deal with the shortage of suitable agricultural cottages in East Suffolk; and if he will consider the building of a minimum number of cottages in order to deal with the present shortage?

Mr. E. Brown: As I recently stated during the Debate on the Address, I fully realise the unsatisfactory housing conditions which obtain in many parts of the country, but the present demand on the

available resources of labour and materials for works of urgent strategic importance preclude me at present from entertaining general proposals for the provision of new houses. I am, however, considering in consultation with my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries whether any special steps can be taken to meet the urgent needs of agricultural workers.

Mr. Granville: Is the Department represented in the discussions now going on between the Ministry of Agriculture and the Agricultural Workers' Union?

Mr. Brown: My Department is in close touch with the Ministry of Agriculture on the whole subject.

Mr. Granville: asked the Minister of Agriculture whether he will consider suspending the granting of cottage certificates by war agricultural committees; and whether he will take steps to prevent any unfair eviction from tied cottages during the war?

The Minister of Agriculture (Mr. R. S. Hudson): A certificate issued by an agricultural executive committee is merely one item of evidence that a court is required to take into account in deciding whether to grant an order for possession. This certificate shows the agricultural needs; but it is for the court to weigh those against other considerations. The arrangements for obtaining possession of agricultural cottages are, however, to be re-examined in consultation with the interests concerned.

Mr. Granville: Are the war agricultural executive committees responsible for finding alternative accommodation for farmers and farm workers who are turned out by their order? Is the matter being discussed in the talks that are going on?

Mr. Hudson: No farm worker is turned out by order of the war agricultural executive committees. All that the war agricultural executive committees have to do is to give a certificate whether in their opinion a cottage is needed for agricultural purposes. The question as to hardship and alternative accommodation has nothing whatever to do with the war agricultural executive committees. It is solely a matter for the courts.

Mr. Granville: What steps is the Department taking to find alternative accommodation for small farmers?

Mr. Hudson: That certainly does not arise out of the Question.

Swill (Sterilisation)

Mr. Higgs: asked the Minister of Agriculture what steps he has taken to ensure that swill is sterilised before distribution from camps and other points of Government concentration where large quantities are always available?

Mr. Hudson: The Departments concerned have agreed that swill from Service establishments should wherever practicable be sterilised by concentration or boiling before disposal to stock keepers, and appropriate arrangements are being made as quickly as practicable.

Man-Power

Mr. De la Bère: asked the Minister of Agriculture whether as it is the Government's intention to get 1,000,000 more acres of land ploughed for the coming harvest, which must be a net increase of tillage acreage, he can now make a statement showing where the labour is to come from to achieve this, in view of the acute labour shortage on farms throughout the country?

Mr. Hudson: Most of the additional regular labour required on farms will have to consist of women, and farmers needing further help should apply to their Executive Committee or to the Women's Land Army well in advance. I hope to have some additional prisoners of war available by harvest time and also an increase in the strength of war agricultural executive committees' gangs. As regards seasonal labour, it is intended to extend and develop still further the various schemes that have been in operation this year. I am aware that the labour problem created by the new ploughing-up programme will be a difficult one, but I can assure my hon. Friend that the Government will do everything in their power to provide the labour required so that the additional acreage can be properly cultivated and the crops harvested.

Mr. De la Bère: Does the right hon. Gentleman fully realise the position, with inadequate labour to deal with the land already ploughed up? If you put an additional 1,000,000 acres on top, the position will be well nigh impossible, given the best will in the world?

Mr. Hudson: If I had thought that was the case, I obviously should not have asked for additional ploughing-up.

Mr. De la Bère: asked the Minister of Agriculture whether he can make a statement regarding the potential call-up of a further 10,000 men from the farms; and whether he can announce the result of his conference with the Minister of Labour on this matter?

Mr. Hudson: There is no present intention of releasing for military service any specified number of workers now employed in agriculture. Only those young men who are not identified as "key" workers on their farms will be released.

Mr. De la Bère: I hope the right hon. Gentleman will always bear in mind my earnest desire to assist him in every possible way.

Long-Term Policy

Mr. De la Bère: asked the Minister of Agriculture whether he will now reconsider his decision in connection with making a pronouncement on Government long-term policy for agriculture, and give an assurance that he will do this early in 1943?

Mr. Hudson: No, Sir.

Mr. De la Bère: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that verbal promises were given to the farmers, and is he aware of the tremendous efforts they have made in the national interest? Would it not be in the national interest that some definite scheme should be announced?

Mr. Hudson: The answer to the first two parts of the question is in the affirmative and to the last part in the negative.

Tractor-Driving (Instruction)

Sir A. Baillie: asked the Minister of Agriculture what steps he is taking to cope with the dearth on the land of skilled tractor-drivers, men with a mechanical sense and a knowledge of simple maintenance work?

Mr. Hudson: Instruction in tractor-driving, and the use and care of farm machinery, has been given during the war by county war agricultural executive committees. In order that this work


might be intensified, I have recently asked committees to appoint machinery instructors, and to start a concerted drive to ensure better knowledge in regard to the care, and use of machinery.

Milk Yields

Sir A. Baillie: asked the Minister of Agriculture whether he is aware that in different winter milk yields are mainly due to insufficient feeding of cows and heifers in the six weeks before calving; and whether this will be remedied by in creased rationed food?

Mr. Hudson: I am well aware of the need for adequate feeding of cows and heifers before calving, but I cannot altogether accept that the position is as stated by my hon. and gallant Friend. Dairy herds receive priority in rations and special provision is made for in-calf animals.

Mr. Loftus: Is my right hon. Friend aware that dried grass is the finest possible food for cattle and that a great deal of it is available, but is not being used, in the aerodromes of the country?

Threshing Tackle

Mr. Price: asked the Minister of Agriculture whether, in view of the large increase of arable acreage and the negligible increase in the threshing tackle in the country, he will take steps to have the latter increased before next harvest?

Mr. Hudson: The production of threshing machines in the latter part of 1942, and the manufacturers' programme for 1943 should result in a considerable increase of tackle available for the next harvest.

Mr. Price: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in several districts there is insufficient tackle and that some farmers will not have straw to bed their cattle down?

Mr. Hudson: It is not so much a question of lack of machines as the difficulty of seeing that they are adequately distributed.
Major Sir Derrick Gunston: Is my right hon. Friend making arrangements to import more harvesters from the United States?

Mr. Hudson: That is being done. We got sanction only yesterday for a largely

increased programme from Canada and the United States. When they will arrive depends on the shipping situation.

Earl Winterton: As great difficulty has arisen in more than one county in the matter of distribution, will the officers of the Department enter into discussions with some of the agricultural executive committees to see if the system of distribution cannot be improved?

Mr. Hudson: I shall be very glad to have particulars. I am always trying to improve the position. If my Noble Friend can offer any suggestions, I shall be only too glad to see if they can be adopted.

Oral Answers to Questions — CHURCH BELLS (RINGING)

Mr. Driberg: asked the Prime Minister whether he can now make any statement concerning church bells, having in mind both the general demand for a more effective form of invasion warning and the immediate desire of many of the public that the bells shall be rung on Christmas morning?

The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr. Attlee): It is hoped that an announcement will be made very shortly.

Mr. Driberg: Does the right hon. Gentleman recall that a week ago he said that there was no danger of the question not being settled before Christmas, and is he aware that Christmas is coming?

Commander Locker-Lampson: Will the right hon. Gentleman ring the bells if there is an announcement of the death of Hitler?

Oral Answers to Questions — WAR SERVICE BADGES

Colonel Arthur Evans: asked the Prime Minister (1) whether the badge which has been sent him bearing the Royal Cipher and the inscription "For King and Empire, Services Rendered," has been authorised, and in what circumstances; if he is aware that this badge is on sale in shops to anyone who cares to make such a purchase, whether they have served overseas with the Forces during the present war or not; and whether he will take steps to deal with the matter;
(2) whether he will reconsider the Government's decision and authorise the issue of an official badge to those members


of the Forces who have served overseas on active service during the present war and been honourably discharged, but who are not in receipt of a pension and therefore not eligible to receive the King's badge?

Mr. Attlee: It certainly seems objectionable that it should be free for anyone to sport an unofficial badge of this nature containing the Royal Cipher. The matter deserves attention though I must not be understood to promise legislation. Perhaps my hon. and gallant Friend would renew the Question in the new Session. As regards the second Question, suggestions for the extension of the official badge for invalided officers and men to classes not already entitled to it have been most carefully considered, and I would refer my hon. and gallant Friend to the reply given to the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Bellenger) on 9th June, of which I am sending him a copy.

Colonel Evans: Is the House to understand that at present it is legal for unofficial badges of this kind, bearing the Royal Cipher and having all the appearance of an official character, to be sold to the public for the sole reason of private gain?

Mr. Attlee: As I understand it, that is the position. I am having it further looked into, but perhaps my hon. and gallant Friend will put down a further Question on this matter after Christmas.

Oral Answers to Questions — POST-WAR EMPLOYMENT

Mr. Mander: asked the Paymaster-General what consideration is being given at the present time to the preparation of plans for preventing unemployment after the war; how far it has proceeded and when a report can be made to the House?

The Paymaster-General (Sir William Jowitt): As regards the first part of the Question, I would refer my hon. Friend to the answer I gave yesterday to my hon. Friend the Member for the Seaham Division (Mr. Shinwell). The problem is one underlying Government policy in many fields, both at home and abroad, and X could not undertake at this stage to forecast how and when decisions bearing upon it will be submitted to the House.

Mr. Mander: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman bear in mind that

there is no question in the public mind more important for the future than this? Can he not give some hope that a report can be made at a fairly early date?

Sir W. Jowitt: I fully realise that there is no question in the public mind, or in fact, more important, but the hon. Member will see that domestic policy must be dependent to a considerable extent on the international settlement.

Mr. Mander: How many committees has the right hon. and learned Gentleman engaged on various aspects of the problem?

Sir W. Jowitt: A very large number.

Mr. Mander: Thirty or forty?

Oral Answers to Questions — WIDOW'S PENSION CLAIM

Mr. Tinker: asked the Minister of Health whether he will have inquiries made into the claim for a widow's pension made by Mrs. Sheeley, 21, Carr Bank Square, Atherton, near Manchester, which has been rejected because there is some doubt about the last two stamps to make up the 104 required by statute?

Mr. E. Brown: I am having inquiries made and will communicate with my hon. Friend.

Oral Answers to Questions — ARMED FORCES AND CIVILIANS (PENSIONS AND GRANTS)

Mr. Buchanan: asked the Minister of Pensions whether he is aware that Mrs. Mary McMahon, 420, Moffat Street, Glasgow, has been refused a pension for the death of her husband; that the late Mr. McMahon served in the last war and rejoined at the outbreak of this war; that he served at Dunkirk and his health since Dunkirk was severely affected; and whether he can see his way to reconsider this case?

The Minister of Pensions (Sir Walter Womersley): Mr. McMahon died of an acute infection contracted long after discharge from the Army and quite independent of the ill-health from which he had suffered during and since service. As his death cannot be associated with his service in either war, I regret that I am unable to make any award to Mrs. McMahon.

Mr. Buchanan: Is not the Minister aware that there is a terrible sense of injustice when the widow of a man who has served his country, come back and passed A 1 and gone to Dunkirk, is treated in this way? Will you ever get any widow or any section of the population to believe that a man who served at Dunkirk has not had his health affected in some way?

Hon. Members: Hear, hear.

Sir W. Womersley: My duty is to consider very sympathetically all the circumstances of the case. I can assure my hon. Friend and other hon. Members who cheered him that I have given the most sympathetic consideration to this case, but it is not possible under the Royal Warrant to grant a pension.

Mr. Stephen: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that such a case doubly shows the need for an alteration in the Royal Warrant, and will he not take the responsibility upon himself of seeing that a change is made so as to avoid these injustices?

Sir W. Womersley: No, Sir, I am not convinced that it is necessary to have an alteration of the Royal Warrant, and if hon. Members saw the papers in this case, they would agree with me.

Lieut.-Colonel Sir Thomas Moore: Does not my right hon. Friend agree that the circumstances that this man and others have gone through expose them to such infection?

Sir W. Womersley: All these circumstances have been taken into consideration, and I say again emphatically that unless Members have an opportunity of seeing the papers as I have seen them—the hon. Member for Gorbals (Mr. Buchanan) can see them—they cannot form any judgment in these cases.

Mr. Norman Bower: asked the Minister of Pensions whether he is aware of the unrest caused among Civil Defence personnel in the Wembley area by his refusal to pay compensation to Mr. W. J. Desborough, a fireguard, for injuries sustained at 3 a.m. on 28th January while proceeding to his post to relieve the member on duty, having previously signed the on-duty book at 7 p.m. the previous evening; that as a result of the accident this fireguard is still suffering severe financial loss; and whether he will

reconsider his decision and undertake that in future no claim for compensation under the Personal Injuries (Civilians) Scheme, 1941, will be refused on technical grounds alone?

Sir W. Womersley: For injuries sustained by Civil Defence personnel, other than those caused by enemy action, the Personal Injuries (Emergency Provisions) Act, 1939, requires that the injury shall have arisen "out of and in the course of duty," a requirement similar to that laid down by the Workmen's Compensation Acts. This requirement would not be satisfied under the Personal Injuries (Emergency Provisions) Act where the member was injured while proceeding to or returning from normal duty any more than it would be under the Workmen's Compensation Acts. I regret, therefore, that I am unable to make any award to Mr. Desborough.

Mr. Bower: Is the Minister aware that this decision has undermined all confidence and security among Civil Defence workers in this area, and does he not think that that is a factor which ought to be taken into consideration?

Sir W. Womersley: I am aware that allegations are made in every case that it is undermining something or other. I shall be glad if the hon. Member will see the papers in this case. If he does I am satisfied that he will not put any more questions.

Oral Answers to Questions — MAHARAJA OF INDORE

Mr. Sorensen: asked the Secretary of State for India whether he will give the reasons for the abdication of His High ness the Maharaja of Indore?

The Secretary of State for India (Mr. Amery): His Highness the Maharaja of Indore has not abdicated and there is no foundation, for any report to that effect?

Mr. Gallacher: Could not the Minister persuade him to abdicate?

Oral Answers to Questions — NATIONAL FINANCE

Crown Servants (Broadcasting Fees)

Mr. Astor: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he can now make a statement regarding the fees paid to serving officers and men for broadcasting?

The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sir Kingsley Wood): The existing rules as to, the fees paid for broadcasting apply to all Crown servants, both civilians and members of the Fighting Forces, whereas the Question which my hon. Friend has asked refers to serving officers and men alone. I have great sympathy with the view that the member of the Fighting Forces who gives an occasional broadcast or so describing his own experiences on active service ought to be allowed to receive the appropriate fee in full. I have, therefore, reconsidered this matter with the object of devising an arrangement which will allow the whole of the fees for broadcasts of this kind to be retained, while maintaining safeguards against what I think would be an undoubted objection if civil servants or Service personnel were allowed to earn substantial supplements to their official emoluments by retaining the whole of the fees for a regular course of broadcasts on matters with which they are connected in their official as well as their private capacity.
I have, therefore, decided, after consultation with the Minister of Information, that in the type of case in which the 50 per cent. rule at present applies all Crown Servants should in future be allowed to draw the full fees up to a maximum of £50 per annum, but that in respect of any fees in excess of £50 a year the 50 per cent. arrangement should operate. I am advised that this will mean in practice that the occasional broadcasts given by members of the Fighting Forces on their experience in action will earn the full fees.

Mr. Astor: May I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his generous concession, which effectively covers the case?

Mr. Stephen: Will the right hon. Gentleman make some arrangements with regard to the fees paid to Members of the Government and Members of the House for broadcasting?

Mr. McNeil: Will the right hon. Gentleman see that this concession also extends to members of the Forces who provide the script for broadcasting but do not do the actual broadcasting?

Sir K. Wood: I will look into that.

Mr. De la Bère: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that I raised this question originally?

Pension Appeals Tribunals (Doctors' Remuneration)

Major Milner: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he has yet fixed the remuneration and conditions of service for medical men to serve on the pension appeals tribunals which it has been promised are to be set up?

Sir K. Wood: No, Sir.

Major Milner: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that although the Government have promised to set up the tribunals, they have delayed doing so because of the alleged shortage of medical men? How can they expect to get medical men if they do not lay down the conditions on which they will serve?

Sir K. Wood: Before I fix the fees I must know the exact conditions that will obtain at the time. It may be that I must fix the fees on a full-time basis, but until the position is resolved I cannot proceed.

Major Milner: Will the right hon. Gentleman endeavour to resolve it in time for our re-assembly?

Sir K. Wood: That is a matter for the Minister of Pensions.

Beveridge Report (Cheap Edition)

Mr. Cocks: asked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury whether, in view of the importance of securing the widest possible circulation for the Beveridge Report, he will consider issuing the Report at a popular price, as was done in the case of the Samuel Report on the Mining Industry?

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Captain Crookshank): An abridged edition of the Beveridge Report is on sale to-day at 3d. a copy.

Oral Answers to Questions — TRADE AND COMMERCE

Post-war Export Trade

Dr. Russell Thomas: asked the Secretary to the Overseas Trade Department whether he has considered the co operative selling plan in connection with post-war export trade which has been sent to him; and whether he will make a statement?

Mr. Harcourt Johnstone (Secretary, Overseas Trade Department): The Com-


mittee under my Chairmanship is examining all problems likely to affect our export trade after the war. Attention has been given to methods of joint marketing on the lines referred to by my hon. Friend. From discussions that have already taken place between my Department and export industries there is evidence that many industries propose to examine, in connection with their post-war plans, whether this form of co-operative selling can, with advantage, either be adopted or extended.

Dr. Thomas: Will my hon. Friend give some interim report on the work of his Department, of which we hear so little and upon which so much depends?

Mr. Johnstone: A report on the prospects of post-war export trade will in due course be rendered by my right hon. Friend the Paymaster-General.

Dr. Thomas: Will he do that soon?

Prosecution, Dartford

Mr. Thorne: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he can give any information about the case made against Israel Small, who was charged at Dartford, Kent, on Saturday, 12th December, with having 1,000 ration books, 346 clothing coupon sheets and 70 clothing coupon books; and what he intends doing about the matter?

Captain Waterhouse: This case is at present sub judice.

Hearing Aids (Batteries)

Mr. Spearman: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that there is an acute shortage of batteries for deaf-aid which is causing hardship for the deaf; whether he will take steps to remedy this; and whether he will remove the purchase tax from the batteries as they are necessary surgical instruments?

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade (Captain Waterhouse): Arrangements were recently made to increase production of high tension batteries for hearing aids and supplies of this type of battery appear to be satisfactory. There have been difficulties in the production of some low tension types due to the placing of certain urgent Service contracts. These difficulties have been overcome and supplies of low tension batteries should shortly be adequate to meet the needs of the deaf. The matter of the Purchase Tax is under consideration.

Oral Answers to Questions — GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS

Overseas Trade Department (Mr. John Rodgers)

Mr. W. Brown: asked the Secretary to the Overseas Trade Department on what grounds the month's notice of discharge on account of redundancy given to Mr. John Rodgers, recently employed as director of post-war export planning in his Department, which was due to expire on 30th April, 1942, was extended to 17th May, 1942, thus ensuring that further reserved employment in another Department became available immediately following the expiration of his service in the Department of Overseas Trade?

Mr. Johnstone: Mr. Rodgers' appointment was extended until the 17th May because it was found impracticable for the permanent Director who succeeded him, as part of a general reorganisation of the Department, to take up his new duties before that date.

Mr. Brown: Can the hon. Gentleman conceive of any circumstances in which this officer would cease to be indispensable?

Mr. Johnstone: The hon. Gentleman had better ask the Department in which he is serving.

Board of Trade (Regional Official)

Mr. W. Brown: asked the President of the Board of Trade in what circumstances has one of his regional factory space inspectors in the Midlands appointed as his assistant at a salary of £500 per annum and motor-car expenses a man of military age with no experience, who resides in the same house; was this appointment made by advertisement and after reference to the qualifications of ex-Service men in the area; for how long his name appeared on the register of the Appointments Board; whether he will terminate it immediately and take appropriate action against officers in his Department who knowingly had any part in it?

Captain Waterhouse: I presume the hon. Member is referring to an officer appointed to fill a vacancy for an assistant in the North Midland Region of the Factory and Storage Premises Control. The salary paid is £450, not £500 as stated in the Question. There is no special allow-


ance for motor-car expenses; provision is made for travelling under the regulations applicable to civil servants generally. No advertisement was made, as this officer was recommended by the Regional Factory Controller, he applied through the Ministry of Labour and National Service, was appointed on probation, and I have a satisfactory report on his work.

Mr. Brown: Does the Minister ask us to believe that it was not possible to get either a man above military age or a woman, and was he really restricted to getting a man of 31 or 32?

Captain Waterhouse: I do not ask the hon. Member to believe anything, but I state the facts as I know them.

Mr. Brown: Does the Minister consider that it is in accord with public policy that the Civil Service should be made a dumping ground for people to avoid military service?

Oral Answers to Questions — ROYAL AIR FORCE

Dive-Bombers

Mr. Purbrick: asked the Secretary of State for Air whether he has received any substantial number of dive-bombers manufactured in England since the end of 1940; and whether the Air Council still considers dive-bombers as obsolete or of only secondary importance?

The Secretary of State for Air (Sir Archibald Sinclair): The answer to the first part of the Question is that aircraft of this type for the Royal Air Force are being produced in America. As for the second part, I would remind the hon. Member that, as I said in my Estimates Speech of 4th. March, dive-bombers were ordered at a time when all the operational evidence was in favour of the dive-bomber. I added that since then operational conditions had changed, but that nevertheless the Air Staff hoped to find good use for this type. I have nothing to add to the statement which I then made, except to say that recent operations have increasingly shown the advantages possessed by the fighter bomber and light bomber over the dive-bomber.

Mr. Cocks: When will these dive-bombers come into operation, or have they come into operation?

Sir A. Sinclair: No, Sir, but the fighter bomber has been in very effective operation.

Royal Observer Corps (Men over 50)

Major Petherick: asked the Secretary of State for Air whether, in view of the anxiety and dissatisfaction caused in the Royal Observer Corps owing to his recent action in dismissing certain men aged 50 and over, he will, as the corps cannot be considered a military organisation, be willing to receive a deputation of Members of Parliament on the subject?

Sir A. Sinclair: The decision to which my hon. and gallant Friend refers was announced to the House on 25th November and has since been the subject of debate. It is already in operation and, glad as I am to discuss with hon. Members matters in which they are interested, no useful purpose could be served by reopening this question.

Major Petherick: Does my right hon. Friend then refuse to receive a deputation? I do not quite understand that, in view of the fact that I am suggesting in the Question that he should receive a deputation of Members of Parliament to state the case on behalf of those who have been or are being dismissed.

Sir A. Sinclair: If my hon. and gallant Friend or any of my hon. Friends wish to see me to ask for further explanations, of course I am at their service, but the decision cannot now be altered.

Earl Winterton: Is my right hon. Friend not aware that he has a constitutional duty to perform, and that if Members of Parliament wish to see him as a deputation, they are perfectly entitled to do so?

Sir A. Sinclair: I have already said so twice.

Oral Answers to Questions — MINISTRY OF INFORMATION

Admiral Darlan (Criticism)

Sir Malcolm Robertson: asked the Minister of Information to what extent the British censorship have refused to allow criticisms of Admiral Darlan to be transmitted to the United States?

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Information (Mr. Thurtle): Criticisms of the arrangement with Admiral Darlan have from the beginning been passed by the British Censorship under the established rules.

Dr. Russell Thomas: Is there not considerable misunderstanding in America as a result of our censorship of news sent to America from the Near East?

Mr. Thurtle: I do not think there is any censorship of news sent to America. There may be misunderstanding in America on the subject.

Dr. Thomas: Is there not delay?

Mr. Astor: Does that answer mean that it is the American censorship that is preventing the American public from realising what is British public opinion about Admiral Darlan?

Mr. Thurtle: I am not saying that. I am saying that the British censorship did not prevent the American public from knowing what British opinion is.

Mr. Astor: Is it due to any other censorship?

Mr. Thurtle: Not to my knowledge.

Despatches from North Africa (Censorship)

Sir M. Robertson: asked the Minister of Information the arrangements for censoring despatches from the North African front; and whether British correspondents have any advantage over their American colleagues?

Mr. Thurtle: The majority of despatches from the North African front are censored at their source; the others are dealt with by the United States Military Censors in London. No messages have passed through the British Censorship at all. The allegation made in certain American newspapers that British correspondents have been given an advantage over their American colleagues is quite untrue and has been categorically denied by the European Theatre Headquarters of the United States Army.

Jews (Broadcasting Facilities)

Commander Locker-Lampson: asked the Minister of Information whether, seeing that the Jews are the only people selected for continuous anti-racial attack by the enemy on the radio, he will afford Jews the opportunity of reply as early and as often as possible?

Mr. Thurtle: Attacks against the Jews have been a nauseating feature of German radio propaganda ever since Hitler took over the Government in Germany and

the B.B.C., just like the British Press, has always given ample publicity to statements by leading Jews and others in answer to the German charges.

Commander Locker-Lampson: Has not the time come for regular broadcasting in favour of Jewry by the B.B.C.?

Mr. Thurtle: I think the B.B.C. will always be willing to give full publicity to statements of that kind whenever they think the time is opportune.

Miss Rathbone: Was not the Jewish reply given long ago in the Old and New Testaments, and is it not time that we, and others, who owe so much to that great people, should take up the cudgels on their behalf?

Requisitioned Building

Sir Ernest Graham-Little: (by Private Notice) asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Works and Planning whether he is aware that Lord Soulbury's Tribunal recently decided to eject the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies in favour of the Ministry of Information; and since this decision will seriously impair the School's ability to fulfil its obligations to the Service Departments, will he arrange to have it reconsidered?

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Works and Building (Mr. Hicks): Yes, Sir. My Noble Friend is aware of the award. It was part of a give-and-take compromise that alternative teaching facilities should be made available, and a scheme is in hand which should prove satisfactory. In the throes of war, when there is a great scarcity of accommodation, there must, if need be, be a general acceptance of reduced standards, and having regard to the long and careful consideration which has been given to the scheme, my Noble Friend feels unable further to review the matter.

Sir E. Graham-Little: Is not the alternative provision totally inadequate? Is my hon. Friend aware that this decision was made without hearing the views of the University Grants Committee, the India Office, the Colonial Office and the Service Departments? Is he further aware that this new encroachment gives to the Ministry of Information the whole of the building provided for the headquarters of London University?

Mr. Hicks: I think my hon. Friend is misinformed in regard to some of the Departments to which he referred. I was present myself on 14th September when there were present representatives of the Ministry of Information, the Admiralty, the Air Ministry, the War Office, the India Office and the Foreign Office.

Earl Winterton: Is the Minister aware that those of us who have had experience in administration of the Overseas Departments in the past regard this School as an absolute necessity, in order that the administration of the Empire may be carried on, and that we have heard with something approaching horror the manner in which the hon. Gentleman dealt with it and the suggestion that this School can be perfectly well reduced during the war?

Mr. Hicks: I am aware of the School, that is partly completed, for Oriental Studies. I have been over the School, and it was with great regret that any attempt had to be made at all to inconvenience it. I can assure the Noble Lord that great consideration has been given to this matter for many months. It is not a question of a hasty decision. Both Lord Soulbury and myself have personally visited the present School and seen the accommodation which they have there, and seen the alternative arrangement. There is quite a lot of accommodation with which the right hon. Gentleman is not at the moment familiar.

Sir John Graham Kerr: Is the Minister aware that the adequate teaching of certain Oriental languages, such as Chinese and Japanese, demands particularly elaborate acoustic arrangements, which are provided in the existing School, and that if he removes the teaching from those conditions he will strike a severe blow at the particular type of teaching of which we are in urgent need at the present time for the war effort?

Mr. Hicks: This matter has been very powerfully advanced by the School of Oriental Studies and by people who have come to urge the claim for the retention of the School for the purpose for which it was originally built. After all this consideration, and before an impartial tribunal, with Lord Soulbury in the chair, the other war needs have been stressed so powerfully, and because the School for Oriental Studies thought they really could accept the other accommodation—

mutual discussion took place—the decision was arrived at.

Mr. Harvey: Can the Minister assure the House that the alternative accommodation offered will provide the special acoustic facilities needed and which are provided in the existing building?

Mr. Hicks: I can assure the hon. Member that everything possible and practicable will be done [Interruption.] We know something about how to silence a building, and our technical staff have been put on to this job to see that everything possible is done to minimise any noise there might be in the building, or which might be capable of entering it, in order that as nearly as possible the present facilities enjoyed in the School shall be repeated with the least possible disadvantage.

Sir William Davison: Is the hon. Gentleman aware there are rows of large empty houses in West London?

Mr. Graham White: Could the hon. Gentleman inform the House, in order that hon. Members may be fully seized of the importance of this matter, what important transactions are to be carried out by the Ministry of Information in this building?

Mr. Hicks: In reply to the hon. Member for South Kensington (Sir W. Davison), the type of building he mentions would be much more unsuitable than those selected. I cannot give a reply to the hon. Member for East Birkenhead (Mr. Graham White). Without a Question being put down, I cannot answer that.

Professor A. V. Hill: Is not this accommodation required by the Ministry of Information simply as ordinary offices?

Mr. Hicks: I should have replied like that if I had been able to.

Sir W. Davison: Why cannot the hon. Gentleman use these ordinary empty houses, of which there are a large number?

Oral Answers to Questions — FUEL AND POWER

Coal Output, Scotland (Regional Controller's Statement)

Major Lloyd: asked the Minister of Fuel and Power whether he has considered a Report from the Scottish Regional Fuel


Controller that, in spite of every effort by managers and trade union leaders in co-operation, the output per man in many of the Scottish mines has fallen substantially in recent weeks owing to lack of effort on the part of a minority of the men; whether he is aware that this Report has caused great concern to fuel consumers in Scotland; and what action he proposes to take in connection with the findings of the Report?

Mr. Gallacher: asked the Minister of Fuel and Power whether he has considered the Report of the Scottish Coal Controller; and what steps does he propose to take to repair the harm done by the biased nature of this Report?

The Minister of Fuel and Power (Major Lloyd George): I have considered the statement by my Regional Controller in Scotland, which was issued with my full agreement. I cannot agree that it is biased, nor am I aware that its veracity has been challenged in any way. It reveals a position which naturally causes concern to consumers in Scotland; it analyses the causes in an impartial manner and by no means confines the responsibility to one side of the industry. I may add that I have agreed to meet representatives of the Scottish Mineworkers' Union at their request this evening to discuss the statement.

Major Lloyd: Is my right hon. and gallant Friend aware that there is very real resentment among a large majority of the miners themselves at the manner in which the minority of recalcitrants are letting them and the country down in this matter?

Major Lloyd George: I am well aware of that. It has been expressed to me personally on occasions and expressed to me in this House.

Mr. Gallacher: Is the Minister aware that this Report has caused very great discontent amongst miners in Scotland and that there is a feeling among them that the Report has been drawn up in consultation with the mineowners, and will the Minister invite Lord Traprain to resign his position?

Major Lloyd George: With regard to the last part of the question, I will certainly do nothing of the kind. I said in my answer that this statement was issued with my full approval. I have read the state-

ment through on several occasions, and I repeat what I said in my original answer, that it is an unbiased Report in its full condition. I am not responsible for extracts taken by certain newspapers out of parts of it. If the Report is taken, as a whole, I repeat that it is an unbiased statement.

Mr. Gallacher: Is there one mention in the Report of any steps being taken to reorganise the mines since the issue of the White Paper?

Major Lloyd George: It is a purpose of the organisation set up under the White Paper to do that, and there is a reference in this very Report to the duty of the organisation.

Mr. Buchanan: Is the Minister aware that this Report throws the whole blame on certain miners and makes no attempt to examine the reorganisation of the industry, and will he take steps to see that before charges are made against miners they are made specifically and directly and not made in vague, general terms?

Major Lloyd George: I am afraid I cannot accept that statement. I do not know whether the hon. Member has read the Report in full—

Mr. Buchanan: I have.

Major Lloyd George: And so have I—

Mr. Buchanan: As far as I could get—

Major Lloyd George: —and I beg him to believe that it is not correct to say that the whole blame is placed on one section. There is a direct reference, and rightly so, in terms, which states that he is by no means satisfied with the efficiency of the mining industry in Scotland, and it is part of the duty of the organisation to put it right.

Mr. Maxton: Does the Minister know whether Lord Traprain issued this Report without consultation with the miners' leaders who were associated with him in his work in Scotland and have given him most loyal support, or whether he acted upon his own initiative?

Major Lloyd George: That I could not say, but, in his Report, he acknowledges very early on the very courageous help he has received from the miners' leaders in


Scotland, and what he has said in the Report has been repeated by practically every miners' leader in the country.

Mr. Sloan: Am I to understand from the Minister that this Report was submitted to him before it was published, as he said in his answer that it was issued with his full approval? Is he further aware that, in this Report, four instances are given of attempts by miners to retard production which bear no relation to the facts at all?

Major Lloyd George: That is a matter of opinion.

Mr. Sloan: It is a matter of fact.

Major Lloyd George: It is a matter of opinion. The hon. Member says that the Report does not give the facts, but that is a matter to be decided. Again I would ask him to read it as a whole. He could not have read it as a whole. I have seen reports myself which have left out the good things the miners have done and put in the bad things. Take this Report as a whole, and I repeat what I said in my first answer that it is an unbiased Report. It simply repeats what has been said all over the country by miners' leaders.

Mr. Sloan: The Minister did not answer the first part of my Supplementary Question, which was whether the Report was examined by him before publication.

Major Lloyd George: I am sorry. I forgot to do so. My Regional Controller consulted with me before the issue of this Report, and I was satisfied, by what he said to me, that he was going to put the case perfectly impartially.

Mr. Sloan: Did not the right hon. and gallant Gentleman see the Report?

Major Lloyd George: I saw the draft of it, certainly. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] I saw the draft of it, and what has been published is what I saw. I have seen it since, and everything I saw before was in the Report.

Mr. Sloan: In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the answer given by the Minister, I beg to give notice that I will raise the matter on the Adjournment.

Mining Industry (Control)

Mr. Foster: asked the Minister of Fuel and Power whether the full personnel

of the present form of control in the mining industry has been completed; the number of persons engaged in an official or administrative capacity, giving the number in each region separately; the total cost per year for salaries and wages for his Department and for each region, separately?

Major Lloyd George: The answer to the first part of the Question is "Yes, Sir." As regards the remainder of the Question, the staff of my Ministry deal with very many questions other than coalmining; and a large amount of work would be involved in estimating the proportion of staff and their salaries concerned with the coalmining industry. If, however, my hon. Friend would let me know precisely what information he requires, I will do my best to supply it.

Mr. Foster: In view of the Minister's Reply, which has not answered the Question on the Order Paper, may I ask whether he cannot give the kind of reply which is required and set out the number of people employed and the salaries paid?

Major Lloyd George: May I ask my hon. Friend whether his Question has direct reference to mining only, as some of the controllers have responsibilities of a wider kind?

Oral Answers to Questions — JEWS (GERMAN BARBARITIES)

United Nations Declaration

Mr. Silverman: (by Private Notice) asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he has any statement to make regarding the plan of the German Government to deport all Jews from the occupied countries to Eastern Europe and there put them to death before the end of the year?

The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. Eden): Yes, Sir, I regret to have to inform the House that reliable reports have recently reached His Majesty's Government regarding the barbarous and inhuman treatment to which Jews are being subjected in. German-occupied Europe. They Have in particular received a note from the Polish Government, which was also communicated to other United Nations and which has received wide publicity in the Press. His Majesty's Government in the United


Kingdom have as a result been in consultation with the United States and Soviet Governments and with the other Allied Governments directly concerned, and I should like to take this opportunity to communicate to the House the text of the following declaration which is being made public to-day at this hour in London, Moscow and Washington:
"The attention of the Governments of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxemberg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, the United States of America, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Yugoslavia, and of the French National Committee has been drawn to numerous reports from Europe that the German authorities, not content with denying to persons of Jewish race in all the territories over which their barbarous rule has been extended the most elementary human rights, are now carrying into effect Hitler's oft repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe. From all the occupied countries Jews are being transported, in conditions of appalling horror and brutality, to Eastern Europe. In Poland, which has been made the principal Nazi slaughterhouse, the ghettoes established by the German invaders are being systematically emptied of all Jews except a few highly skilled workers required for war industries. None of those taken away are ever heard of again. The able-bodied are slowly worked to death in labour camps. The infirm are left to die of exposure and starvation or are deliberately massacred in mass executions. The number of victims of these bloody cruelties is reckoned in many hundreds of thousands of entirely innocent men, women and children.
The above mentioned Governments and the French National Committee condemn in the strongest possible terms this bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination. They declare that such events can only strengthen the resolve of all freedom loving peoples to overthrow the barbarous Hitlerite tyranny. They re-affirm their solemn resolution to ensure that those responsible for these crimes shall not escape retribution, and to press on with the necessary practical measures to this end."

Mr. Silverman: While thanking the right hon. Gentleman for that statement, in which he has given eloquent expression to the conscience of humanity in this matter, might I ask him to clear up two points: First, whether the phrase, "those responsible" is to be understood to mean only those who gave the orders, or is it to include also anybody actively associated with the carrying-out of those orders? [An HON. MEMBER: "The whole German nation."] Secondly, whether he is consulting with the United Nations Governments and with his own colleagues as to what constructive measures of relief are immediately practicable?

Mr. Eden: The hon. Gentleman and the House will understand that the declaration I have just read is an international declaration agreed to by all the Governments I mentioned at the outset. So far as the responsibility is concerned, I would certainly say it is the intention that all persons who can properly be held responsible for these crimes, whether they are the ringleaders or the actual perpetrators of the outrages, should be treated alike, and brought to book. As regards the second question, my hon. Friend knows the immense difficulties in the way of what he suggests, but he may be sure that we shall do all we can to alleviate these horrors, though I fear that what we can do at this stage must inevitably be slight.

Mr. Sorensen: Having regard to the widespread abhorrence of all people regarding these crimes, could attempts not be made to explore the possibility of co-operation with non-belligerent and neutral Governments to secure the emigration of Jews, say, to Sweden or to some other neutral country?

Mr. Eden: My hon. Friend will see that it is only too clear, from what I have said, what is going on in these territories occupied by Germany. Naturally I should be only too glad to see anything of the kind, but the hon. Member will understand the circumstances.

Mr. Sorensen: Am I to understand that the right hon. Gentleman is exploring that possibility?

Mr. de Rothschild: May I express to the right hon. Gentleman and this House the feelings of great emotion—the really grateful feeling that I am certain will permeate the Jewish subjects of His Majesty's Gov-


ernment in this country and throughout the Empire at the eloquent and just denunciation which has just been made by the right hon. Gentleman? Among the Jewish subjects of His Majesty there are many to-day who have been in this country only for a generation or so. They will feel that, but for the grace of God, they themselves might be among the victims of the Nazi tyranny at the present time. They might be in those ghettoes, in those concentration camps, in those slaughter-houses. They will have many relations whom they mourn, and I feel sure they will be grateful to the right hon. Gentleman and to the United Nations for this declaration. I trust that this proclamation will, through the medium of the B.B.C., percolate throughout the German-infested countries and that it may give some faint hope and courage to the unfortunate victims of torment and insult and degradation. They have shown in their misery and their unhappiness great fortitude and great courage. I hope that when this news goes to them they will feel that they are supported and strengthened by the British Government and by the other United Nations and that they will be enabled to continue to signify that they still uphold the dignity of man.

Sir Percy Hurd: Can my right hon. Friend say whether Canada and the other Dominions were asked to share in this declaration?

Mr. Eden: In the first instance, this, as my hon. Friend will realise, is a declaration organised by the European countries who are suffering, and it was necessary that the three great Powers should get together quickly about the matter. We thought it right, and I am sure the House will think it right, that the principal victims should sign this paper as rapidly as possible. I think the whole House fully understands that, and I know that the Dominions Governments very fully understand it. Perhaps I should state that arrangements are being made for this statement to be broadcast throughout Europe from here, and, of course, it is being done from Moscow and Washington also. I may also say that all the information we have from the occupied countries is that the peoples there, despite their many sufferings, trials and tribulations, are doing everything in their power to give assistance and charity to their Jewish fellow subjects.

Mr. Lipson: May I associate myself with everything that has been said by my hon. Friends the Members for the Isle of Ely (Mr. de Rothschild) and Nelson and Colne (Mr. Silverman), and ask my right hon. Friend whether if this protest is broadcast to the German people, it will be made clear to them that this is not war but murder and that they must be held in some measure responsible, if they allow the German Government to carry out their horrible intentions?

Mr. Eden: Yes, Sir, that is precisely what was in the minds of His Majesty's Government when we took steps to set this declaration in motion.

Mr. Silverman: Would the right hon. Gentleman consider in the broadcasts which are made not limiting the question of responsibility to the negative side of punishment but expressing the appreciation which we all feel for the numerous acts of courage done all over Europe by individuals who take enormous risks in order to render what help they can to those who are suffering; and would it not be right, in the broadcasts, to promise those individuals that what they are doing now will not be forgotten but will redound to their credit and benefit when the time comes?

Mr. Eden: Yes, Sir.

Mr. McGovern: May we take it from the right hon. Gentleman's statement that any persons who can escape from any of these occupied territories will be welcomed and given every assistance in the territories of the United Nations?

Mr. Eden: Certainly we should like to do all we possibly can. There are, obviously, certain security formalities which have to be considered. It would clearly be the desire of the United Nations to do everything they could to provide wherever possible an asylum for these people, but the House will understand that there are immense geographical and other difficulties in the matter.

Miss Rathbone: Will this declaration be addressed also to the Governments and the peoples of Hitler's unwilling allies, the other Axis countries, who might be able to do much to secure the rescue of these victims?

Mr. Eden: That has already been arranged.

Mr. Cluse: Is it possible, in your judgment, Mr. Speaker, for Members of the House to rise in their places and stand in silence in support of this protest against disgusting barbarism?

Mr. Speaker: That should be a spontaneous act by the House as a whole.

Members of the House then stood in silence.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Mr. Arthur Greenwood: Will the Leader of the House state the Business for the first week after the Recess?

Mr. Eden: The Business for the first week after the Recess will be as follows:
First Sitting Day—If necessary, a statement will be made on the war situation; Second Reading of the Crown Lands Bill, and of the Police (Appeals) Bill.
Second and Third Sitting Days—A Debate will take place in Secret Session on Man-Power.

Mr. Clement Davies: In view of what occurred yesterday and Tuesday, it is now perfectly obvious that the question of the efficiency of tanks is highly controversial and cannot be left in the way in which it has been left. Would it be possible to arrange an early day after we resume for a full Debate on the quantity and quality of tanks?

Mr. Eden: I could not give an undertaking about that. A good deal of Business has already been fixed for the first series of Sitting Days after we resume. If there were a sufficiently widespread demand in the House for such a Debate, that would be another matter, but, so far, I have been unable to find evidence of that.

Sir Richard Acland: Will the right hon. Gentleman take note of what was said towards the end of yesterday's Debate about the desirability of having a discussion on the basis of economic policy?

Mr. Buchanan: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that if this should turn out to be a severe winter, the coal situation in this country may become acute? As it is a matter governed largely by climatic conditions, will he keep his mind open for a reconsideration of the subject, because if the situation should become

acute, particularly as regards the great mass of domestic consumers, it may be necessary to rearrange the Business in order to deal with that position?

Mr. Eden: That is certainly being watched closely. Fortunately, so far the winter has been very mild.

Mr. W. Brown: In arranging the Business after the Recess, will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind the desire of many hon. Members to have a discussion on the Report of the Select Committee on National Expenditure, on the organisation and control of British industry?

Mr. Eiden: I hope to be able to arrange that at a fairly early date.

Mr. Evelyn Walkden: Will the Debate in Secret Session on man-power include a discussion of the Motion standing on the Order Paper in the name of the hon. Member for Westhoughton (Mr. Rhys Davies)?

[That this House is of opinion that, in the allocation of man-power in the war effort, due regard is not being paid to the public need for the maintenance of an efficient service in the distribution of food; and therefore calls upon His Majesty's Government to reconsider the situation created by the calling up of so many shopkeepers and shop assistants without any provision of substitutes for carrying on this essential public service.]

Mr. Eden: We shall be dealing with man-power generally. I do not know that the point which the hon. Member raises is a matter for me.

Earl Winterton: Would the right hon. Gentleman bear this point in mind? He said that it might be necessary to have a statement on the war situation when the House resumes. Will he take into consideration the representations which have been made to him, both privately and in public, from various quarters in this House that if it is the wish of any considerable number of Members that it is desirable should such a statement be made, that it should be followed by a Debate? If an important statement is made by the Prime Minister, will he take the necessary steps, by moving the Adjournment to enable the statement to be debated?

Mr. Eden: My Noble Friend knows that very often these statements have


been debated in the past, and if it were a very important statement and if there were much feeling that a Debate was desirable, obviously representations to that effect would be considered, but I cannot commit myself now until I know what will be the character of the statement.

Mr. Harvey: Would the Leader of the House bear in mind the possibility of giving a day in which the declaration that he has just made may be followed up and consideration given to the possibility of rescuing such of the Jewish people as may escape from these massacres?

Mr. Eden: I have doubts myself whether it would be useful. We shall do what we can, but I doubt whether public discussion would help very much.

Mr. Ivor Thomas: When does the right hon. Gentleman hope to be in a position to lay before the House his proposals for the recruitment and reorganisation of the Foreign Office and Consular Services?

Mr. Eden: I cannot give a definite day. I hope, before very long.

Miss Rathbone: Will my right hon. Friend consider the desirability of having a Debate to-day, even if only a brief one, on the declaration which he made earlier? Is it not important to make known as widely as possible, so that other nations may be influenced by our example, any steps that we can announce on the part of our Government?

Mr. Eden: Yes, Sir.

BILL PRESENTED

CROWN LANDS,

"to make the Secretary of State for Scotland a Commissioner of Crown Lands"; presented by Sir John Anderson, supported by Mr. T. Johnston, Mr. R. S. Hudson and Captain Crookshank; to be read a Second time upon the next Sitting Day, and to be printed [Bill 7].

NATIONAL EXPENDITURE

First, Second and Third Reports from the Select Committee brought up and read; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed [Nos. 17, 18 and 19].

ADJOURNMENT (CHRISTMAS)

CIVIL AVIATION

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. James Stuart.]

Mr. Perkins: Before the war we had a number of debates on civil aviation. Those debates took place because there was in this House a large body of opinion that all was not well with civil aviation. I can assure the Government that there is still in the House and in the country a body of opinion which is perturbed about the position. The other reason for those debates was the treatment meted out to the pilots. At that time the pilots were treated as untouchables, as men void of intelligence and bereft of reason. The Air Ministry, the Air Council, and the operating company would none of them even negotiate with the pilots' organisation. I am thankful to say that the situation has changed. Never have the relations been better between the pilots' organisation and the Air Ministry and the operating company. The door is not only ajar but wide open, and every necessary subject is discussed between them. But there is one rather small personal matter which the pilots have asked me to mention. When the Prime Minister went to Russia, when Lord and Lady Halifax flew over to America, and when the Prime Minister of South Africa went back to South Africa, they chose, for some unexplained reason, a comparatively inexperienced pilot, a man who holds no British flying qualification at all, and who in fact is not a British subject. These old pilots, who have been carrying the torch of British aviation for 20 years, regard that action of the Air Minister as a personal slight. I ask the Under-Secretary to use his influence with the Air Ministry and with the Members of the Government generally to do everything in their power to fly British in future.
My quarrel to-day is not with the operating company, as on previous occasions, but partly with the Secretary of State for Air and partly with the Paymaster-General. I wish to cross swords with the Secretary of State because he represents the Air Council. The Air Council never has been interested in civil aviation. I do not believe that it ever will be interested in civil aviation. It is commonly


reported outside that the only time when members of the Air Council are interested in civil aviation is when they are getting rather elderly, and are looking round for directorships in the operating companies. My quarrel with the Paymaster-General is of a different nature. It has fallen to his lot to initiate a new era of world transport. I know what the Paymaster-General is thinking—he is thinking of that old Dutch proverb, "Young men think old men are fools; old men know young men to be so." But, fortunately, I am neither old nor young, but middle-aged. I am sorry for my right hon. and learned Friend, being suddenly pitchforked into this civil aviation arena. He has to make decisions—and to make them soon—which will affect the whole future of world transport, which I believe will decide whether we are to remain a first-class Power, which will decide whether we are going to have 100 years of peace or ever-recurring wars. He has my sympathy. For some reason my right hon. and learned Friend is at this moment finding it difficult to come to certain conclusions.
In August, 1941, an Inter-departmental Committee was set up, to explore the position and to advise the Minister. That Committee issued on interim report 11 months ago. I understand—I may be wrong—that that report was in the form of a series of policy questions to the Cabinet. Until those questions of policy are settled this Committee cannot go on functioning usefully. I do not know what is causing the delay. Eleven months is a long time. Perhaps the report has been mislaid, perhaps it has been pigeon-holed, or perhaps it has slipped my right hon. and learned Friend's memory. I urge him, with all the power I have, to come to some conclusion now. Until he decides these matters, nothing can be done for the future: no plans can be laid, and no decisions made. Unfortunately, while he is considering this matter—if he is—Pan-American Airways are stretching their tentacles all over the world. I am not in any way antagonistic to the great American nation. I believe that it is vital that in future we should co-operate with the Americans in air transport. I foresee that unless we do as soon as the armistice comes there will be a race between the Americans and ourselves to control the airlines of the world. We shall have

practically no aeroplanes to compete, except those loaned to us under Lease-Lend. If we try to run airlines with those loaned to us by the Americans friction is inevitable. I urge the Government now, before we get to that stage, to call a conference with our American Allies, to settle once and for all which particular sphere of influence will belong to each country. Otherwise, I am convinced there will be friction, and we might even have another Boston Tea Party.
In the Pacific the Americans have a complete monopoly. As far as I can see, there is no prospect of a British air line ever operating in the Pacific. In the South Atlantic also the Americans have a complete monopoly. In the North Atlantic—and I include the southern route of the North Atlantic—I believe that for every British-owned air liner crossing it there are at least two American. That is a very conservative figure. Of our machines operating, every one is of American manufacture. We have in this country only two civil aircraft capable of flying the Atlantic—the "Champion" and the "Cathay." In Africa the Americans were given an entree. I understand, from an answer I have been given, that that entree was only for one year, and that after that year American civil aviation, as far as Africa was concerned, would be militarised. I believe that it has been militarised. But what is the difference? It is the same people, it is the same organisation, it is the same aerodromes. Everything is exactly the same, except that the men who are running the line, instead of wearing bowler hats and umbrellas, are now wearing tin hats and gas masks. It is merely a change of uniform. I trust that the Under-Secretary does not believe that the Americans after the war are going gracefuly to retire from Africa. If he believes that, he is the only person in the world connected with British aviation who does. Also, I understand—I hope I am wrong—that we shall shortly see the American air lines operating from Aden and from India. So much for the flying side.
Now the production side. As the House knows, some time ago an agreement was arrived at with America by which we would make the small aircraft—the fighter aircraft and the smaller bombers—whereas they on their side would make the big


transport machines which could fly over the Atlantic. As a result of that agreement there are now coming off the stocks in very large numbers in America, the most modern transport machines the world has ever seen. These machines are coming in large numbers to all the internal air lines in America and also to the air transport command. Machines such as the new four-engined Douglas, the well known D.C.3, the two-engined Douglas are now pouring off the production lines and are equipping American Lines. In the almost immediate future we shall see coming out from the American factories aircraft at least twice as big as anything even contemplated in this country.
What is our position? British Overseas Airways have a considerable number of aircraft. It is probably not in the public interest that I should divulge the exact number, but at this moment they are using daily 13 different types, and in the near future they will be using 17 different types. As far as engines are concerned, they are now using 14 different types. This mixed assortment of aircraft consists partly of old crocks, five, six, seven years old, many of them ripe for the scrap-heap. It consists partly of R.A.F. throw-outs, crumbs from the rich man's table, machines which the R.A.F. do not want, and partly, owing to the generosity of our American friends' modem American machines. Luckily there has been a very substantial sweetening of these American machines, and now well over half of the British Overseas Airways machines are equipped with American engines and nearly a half, but not quite, of the British Overseas Airways machines are entirely American. It must be obvious to anyone how utterly impossible it is to run an air line with this mixed assortment of machines and engines.
What is our future position? And this is where I quarrel with the Minister of Aircraft Production. His Parliamentary Secretary has admitted in this House that no orders have been placed for genuine civil machines, no plans are in hand and no designs are being considered at present either for a civil engine or for a civil aircraft. I know what the Government will answer. They will say, "Ah, have you not heard of the 'York'?" I have heard

of the "York." The "York" was not designed as a civil machine; it was designed as a bomber and then was converted to use with the Army. I am fully aware that that machine is an ideal machine for civil airways but—and facts speak for themselves—not a single one has yet been made available for British air transport. My hon. and gallant Friend will talk about another machine which I do not think I ought to mention in public, but I can call it the "W." The "W" is an R.A.F. outcast. It was designed for the R.A.F. and for some mysterious reason the R.A.F. did not like it and so they are generously handing it over to civil aviation—another outcast, another case of crumbs from the rich man's table. I allege that at this moment we have neither in this country nor in the Empire any modern British civil machine and that there are no plans for producing a modern British machine anywhere in existence.
It is always easy to be critical but it is always much harder to put up constructive suggestions. I do not believe that the pass is yet completely sold. I believe that we can retrieve the position partly if we take action now. I want to detain the House another three or four minutes just to put up one or two suggestions. First of all the short-term programme, the immediate programme. Surely it is not beyond us to bring British Overseas Airways up to date? I am told that if the Air Ministry or rather if the Air Council, that reactionary Air Council, would release but 30 machines at once—20 "Yorks" and 10 "Sunderlands"—we would at any rate be able to look Pan-American in the face. I fully expect that we shall be told that we may be going to get one or two "Sunderlands." I hope that that is true. I also hope, if we are going to get these "Sunderlands," they will be equipped with what is known as "full feathered airscrews." I am told by my friends that the idea is they will not have this elementary safety device. It seems to me almost criminal that the highly important people who now use our air lines should be asked to fly on machines that have not this elementary safety device. I am told that the Secretary of State will say, "Fancy talking of 10 'Sunderlands' or 20 'Yorks.' Why, it is quite impossible. We want every machine we can possibly get in order to bomb Germany." Will it really make any difference


to the bombing loads on Germany if 20 of these "Yorks" are taken and instead of 990 machines going over on one night there are only 970? I cannot believe that the releasing of 20 of these modern machines will really have any effect whatever on our attack upon Germany.
There are four advantages of this scheme. I am told that, if we could only get these 20 "Yorks," it would be possible to scrap up to 60 of the old crocks now being used by British Overseas Airways, resulting in a great saving in personnel, expense, time and spares. The second advantage is that we could look Pan-American Airways in the face now, and if a conference took place we could bargain with them on equal terms. Thirdly, we would have something which would enable us to hold our own for probably two years after the Armistice because we have the "Yorks" for the long-distance lines and the boats for the Empire service, and provided we are allowed to keep them under Lend-Lease we would have the "Lodestars" for the European services. The fourth advantage is that two-thirds of the fleet would then be British, and instead of 17 types with 14 engines, we would have three types with three engines.
Now the long-term policy. I and many hon. Members have advocated this before. Surely the first thing to do is to take civil aviation away from the Air Ministry and hand it over to some other Department. Secondly, are we really wise in concentrating after the war on one chosen instrument? Would it not be better, in view of what is going to happen after the war, to have at least two or, if possible, three chosen instruments? Thirdly, would it not be possible to set up a Committee now with instructions to publish a report to the Government not less than three months hence to consider civil aviation in all its aspects? I do not mean to consider only air liners. I mean gliding, light aeroplane clubs, private flying, etc. If we had that Committee and if we could get a report, something in writing and something on which to work, then I believe we would have done something by initiating this Debate. The fourth suggestion is that we should design at once three aircraft and three engines for the future. I know the Under-Secretary will say that

we have no designers. If he really believes that we are short of designers in this country, I hope he will discuss the matter with the Marines. Has he never heard of Sir Roy Fedden? Surely Sir Roy Fedden would have been far better employed designing the civil engine for the future instead of going off on a stamp-licking expedition to America.
But I am not without hope for the future. For the last three years I have been flying with the grand young men of the Royal Air Force. I know something of their thoughts, dreams and ideals, and I am absolutely convinced that when they come out of uniform they will not be satisfied with ships and trains; they will want something different and something faster, and not even the reactionary Air Council will be able to hold them back. They know what they want, and they will get it. There is, however, another reason why I have not given up hope. The public conscience is now beginning to awake on this matter. I have noticed that in the daily Press there have been several articles on this subject recently. Even that profound and dogmatic paper "The Times" is awakening. It published an article a week ago about the need for shipping companies to take up this matter. I hope they will, and I also hope that every director of these companies will sit down and read the report of the American Maritime Commission on this subject. That report was published nearly five years ago after the Commission had been set up to advise the American Government as to whether that great country should go in for super-ships of the "Queen Mary" class or super-airliners. After the most exhaustive inquiry they came to the conclusion that these comparatively slow ships cannot compete with fast aircraft. Six large flying boats of the future—and the future is very near—can carry in one year over the Atlantic more passengers than the "Queen Mary." The trip will take 10 hours or less against the five days of the super-liner. Passengers will travel at great heights in pressure cabins, above all the bad weather, and air and sea sickness will become a thing of the past. People will have in those 10 hours approximately the same standard of comfort as have the people who now travel to Scotland at night in an English sleeper.
If we do not start to design these machines now, other people will. Other people will control our trade routes; they will get our trade; the pound sterling will not buy an ounce of confetti; the Beveridge Report will become an interesting relic of the past, and we shall dwindle until we become a second-class Power. Never were the stakes so high as they are now, and never was there such a grand opportunity as we have now. Did all those early pioneers in flying who gave their lives to produce modern aircraft and all those grand young boys who gave their lives in the last war and in this, do so in order to produce aeroplanes to perpetuate permanent blitzes every 20 years, or did they do it because people believed, as every pilot believes, that the aeroplane has been given to us to bring about an era of permanent peace and an undreamtof measure of happiness in this world? As I have said, there is a grand opportunity. I wonder whether the Secretary of State for Air, his Air Council and the Paymaster-General will take it. If only they had one tiny particle of the foresight of that old and great poet Thomas Gray, who, 205 years ago, prophesied the future of British Civil Aviation. He said:
The time will come when thou shalt lift thine eyes
To watch the long-drawn battle in the skies,
While aged peasants, too amazed for words,
Stare at the flying fleet of wondrous birds,
England, so long Mistress of the sea,
Where wind and waves confess her Sovereignty,
Her ancient traditions yet on high she bore And reigned the Sovereign of the conquered air.

Group Captain Wright: I think the House is grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Perkins) for raising this matter today. Certainly I would like to congratulate him on the excellent speech to which we have just listened and which was delivered in his usual breezy and forthright style. I have spoken on this subject so frequently that I find it difficult to add very much to the case I have put forward on so many occasions in the past. Nor do I feel that we can gain very much by going back and worrying about the mistakes of the past, mistakes which to-day are so clear and obvious. For instance, I suppose one of the worst mistakes we made in recent years was the sacrificing of

the trans-African route. At the time those of us who saw clearly what would happen did not fail to raise our voices, but it was of no avail. The greatest mistake we have made in the past, of course, was the failure on the part of the Air Ministry, in spite of what was said in this House over and over again, to envisage that when the war broke out the right policy was not to shut down civil aviation but to develop and encourage it, because it would be such a very necessary ancillary part of the war machine. As a result of the failure to envisage that, this country is almost entirely lacking in suitable transport machines to-day.
We have been jockeyed into an exceedingly delicate and difficult political situation, from which it is not so easy now, with our commitments to the war effort, to extricate ourselves. I realise how difficult it is at the present time to develop an air liner for the future. I think there is something to be said for those who argue that we do not yet know how long the war will last and that development in aircraft and engine production is so rapid and great that even if we were to design to-day what was thought to be a suitable transport liner for the future, it might well become out of date very soon. That, however, is, I think, a reactionary view, and even at the risk of having to scrap our designs—the worst would be that we should have to keep bringing them up to date—I still think we ought to find time to explore the situation. One of the reasons why my hon. Friend and I particularly wanted to raise this matter to-day is that there is undoubtedly, at long last, a great wakening of interest in civil aviation throughout the country. This interest has been aroused largely because the aeroplane has proved itself the dominant factor in the successful prosecution of modern war. This was, of course, prophesied by many of us in those happier years when, on the Floor of the House, we fought at regular intervals what was known as "the battle of the Admirals." In the same way to-day, we prophesy that the aeroplane will also prove to be the dominant factor in the successful prosecution of the peace.
My hon. Friend has stated that the future of this great Commonwealth of Nations may well depend on how we handle this matter, and in that I cannot


do otherwise than whole-heartedly agree with him. Although we are raising the matter now, we do not expect that the Government will necessarily be able to divulge to us such plans as they may be developing, if indeed they are developing any, at the present time. We appreciate that the future development of civil aviation must very largely depend on the shape of the world when hostilities cease. When I refer to the shape of the world, I do not mean so much its geographical shape, because I think it is agreed that none of the United Nations is seeking to alter very much the geographical formation of the world; I am referring to its shape politically. Obviously, the whole future of civil aviation, as of so many other features of reconstruction, must depend on the degree of co-operation or otherwise which will exist among the nations when hostilities cease. If we are to continue the present unified co-operation which we are using so successfully to prosecute the war, then indeed the future of civil aviation can be dealt with successfully, and I think the future will be bright, but if we are to return to a condition of insane, un-restricted international competition, the future of civil aviation, as of so many other features of reconstruction, will be exceedingly black.
There are, however, things which we can do now, and which we should be doing. If we assume that we are to have this co-operation, then we can envisage certain lines upon which civil aviation will develop. As soon as we can envisage a completely internationalised air transport service working all over the world, we can envisage a modification of that whereby the great Powers would more or less control certain zones of influence, and their individual systems would be interlocked and geared together so as to produce that world system of transport. We can envisage a situation in which there would be free and unrestricted use of both air and air ports. I cannot believe that under any system of co-operation we shall return to the dark days of restriction when a country thought it was improper for another country to fly in what it regarded as its air—that is, the air over its own territory—and when there were evil and discriminating influences at work as to who should use a particular airport. I cannot believe we shall return to those days. Therefore, there is a series of

obvious lines on which the matter can be considered, and each of these policies, whichever may be adopted, will automatically raise a whole list of difficulties and problems which will have to be solved.
I suggest that if we leave consideration of the whole system until the end of hostilities, these problems will never get the proper consideration which they should have, and we shall return to a state oil chaotic confusion in which there can be no properly planned co-operation. The difficulties run on these lines. Let us suppose that we shall have an internationally controlled system of air transport. Shall we have a general pool of designs and improvements? Shall we design machines internationally? How shall we produce them, and will the countries, all working in co-operation, be given a standard machine to make at regular intervals so that there is a fair sharing out of the great industry which is bound to grow up consequent upon this development of new transport? Will the countries be given those orders under some regular system, or will they compete in the open market under price tenders? All those are points which should be receiving consideration at the present time, so that we may be ready to meet each and any of the situations that will arise.
There is another matter to which I wish to refer before concluding my remarks. It is a subject to which I make no apologies for returning, although it was raised by the hon. Lady the Member for Frome (Mrs. Tate) most effectively when the House went into Committee on the Air Estimates a few months ago. On that occasion, I supported the hon. Lady. The question was the condition of the British Overseas Airways Corporation. I do not want again to reiterate the obvious failings which were stated quite clearly at that time, but I want to point out that even as the result of those disclosures nothing whatever has been done in the meantime. If we were in a time of peace, we should have in the British Overseas Airways Corporation all the makings of another Cadman Committee and an equally bad report. The Corporation is seething with discontent inside. This is well known. I think the fact is actually admitted even by those in control, but it is most regrettable that the directors will


not face the situation and will not stand up, if it is necessary, even to my right hon. and gallant Friend at the Air Ministry.
When I spoke on the matter on the Air Estimates, I said I thought the Director-General was a first-class man who would tackle the job. I regret to say, although I know that the whole situation has been put most clearly to me, although he has been appealed to to take action, he has proved himself in the end, like the others, to be weak and not capable of standing up to the job. So there is something there which should and can be dealt with and there is no excuse for not dealing with it. It is really not fair to the British Overseas Airways Corporation, which after all is the chosen instrument of this House and was purchased from the shareholders in Imperial Airways and British Airways at very fair prices and a deal made almost when the war was upon us which has turned out very much to their advantage as things are to-day, it is not fair to the national interest, to civil aviation in the future, nor to himself that he should postpone dealing with this matter, because he is very busy, until he feels that he can make it more or less a whole-time job. The matter should be tackled at once. The Air Ministry has been the grave of a good many political reputations. My right hon. and gallant Friend is one of the few who have enhanced their reputations. I beg of him to show once again that keenness which he used to show on the Back Benches in the old days when he was a Director of British Airways and so not take any risk of losing the very great confidence which the House has in him.

Sir Lindsay Everard: The last war was really the beginning of aviation. Out of the last war civil aviation was born. It is only 18 years ago that Imperial Airways itself was formed out of the amalgamation of the four companies then running between London and Paris. We have during the last few weeks been discussing various plans for the future of the country after the war. It is not generally well understood that although aviation itself means speed, there is probably nothing that takes longer than the preparations for aviation. You can put social reforms into operation and

have reports within a few months, but it takes several years before you can get a new design of aircraft into the air, arranging landing grounds properly and all the other things that are necessary. There is no doubt that we have arrived at the moment when something must be done to speed up aviation after the war. We look upon ourselves as a first-class nation. We have never had first-class civil aviation. We have been a long way behind other countries. We could not even compete with the Dutch. Their Empire is not comparable with ours, but the K.L.M. Line is not only equal to but better than ours. A great number of officers serving in the East used to come home by that service because it was faster and more up-to-date. If we are to be a first-class nation, we must have first-class ideas of civil aviation. It is no good trying to run a first-class Empire with third-class aviation in the future, otherwise we shall court disaster, and we shall deserve it.
When I have spoken before on these topics I have said that in my opinion in the past civil aviation was best under the Air Ministry, but I qualified that by saying that there should be three definite Ministers, as there are with the Army and Navy. We have three to-day, but we only have really a temporary third, Lord Sherwood, I do not suppose we shall have two Permanent Secretaries after the war. Until we definitely get a Minister for Civil Aviation we shall never really make headway, because the Under-Secretary—I have the greatest respect for all that he does—has far too much to do with the military side of aviation to be able to undertake this job as well. After all, there are a Minister of Mines and a Minister for Overseas Trade, both under the Board of Trade, and there should be a Minister for Civil Aviation under the Air Ministry. If the Ministry are not able to support that, I am in favour of civil aviation going away from the Air Ministry altogether; because I am convinced that it has had a very poor deal from the Air Ministry in the past and it does not look as if we should have a very good deal in the future. The position is so grave and the issues are so important that we cannot now afford to do anything that we should regret later on.
If we had this Minister for Civil Aviation as a Department of the Air Ministry acting on his own, there would seem


to me to be two things that we should press for. One is an open-sky policy on the lines of the Atlantic Charter, that is to say, freedom for all aircraft flying over all countries, doing away with prohibited areas which smaller countries delight to put all over their maps—to get a real understanding about the rights and privileges of flying over each other's country. We all remember the trouble the Italians gave us in North Africa, and they would not allow us to fly to Brindisi. Imperial Airways had to go by train from Paris. Now we have practically all the Governments of the free nations in this country. We presume that we shall win the war, therefore we should put some restrictions on those which are our enemies to-day as regards flying rights rights over their territories. I hope we shall. Now is the moment when we should call together those who are with us now in London and discuss an agreement as to an open-sky policy for the civil aviation of the world after the war. The second thing that should be done is to have a general more or less detailed arrangement connected with Empire and trans-Atlantic airways, not only on European services but also on engines, instruction and aerodromes and equipment. There are various other items which have to be dealt with under their various heads. The facts of most of them are already known. It is not necessary to waste years on a committee. Perhaps some of those headings would have to be considered by different committees, but there are a great many points of which everyone is fully aware which could quite easily be settled by the Minister himself should we have a Minister, as I suggest.
The important side of the future of civil aviation is our Empire services and the trans-Atlantic routes. Upon that hinges the whole future prosperity of the country. None of us really realises what the flow of goods and personnel is going to be after the war, when we get civil aviation into the minds of the people. People have become much more air-minded now. I well remember the time when we had complaints of somebody flying over somebody else's house because of the noise. That was only three or four years ago. Now we have a continual buzz of machines day and night, and people have got used to it. The more we get used to

these things the more we shall use them. Aviation will be the method after the war of bringing the British Empire close to us and bringing our own people together. If we are not able to bring goods from our Empire to our own doorsteps after the war, and if we are not able to live next door to those who are now living in the Empire—literally next door because we shall be able to fly over and see them in a day—the Empire will not be as strong as it could be if we availed ourselves of the facilities available to us.
I cannot speak too strongly of the importance I place on civil aviation as the link between the whole of this country and various parts of the Empire and between the American people and ourselves. There is no doubt that for many years to come the Americans and ourselves will have to rule the world to all intents and purposes so as to see that things are rightly done in the world. We shall have to live almost in each other's countries in order to do that. I was amazed the other day when talking to an American friend in a train in this country. We were speaking about American problems, and he said, "You do not understand the size of the United States." I said that I had not been over there and that I did not. He then said, "Do you know that it is nearer to Washington from this train than some of the constituencies in America are to Washington?" That is to say, it is easier to get from England to Washington than from some parts of the United States to Washington. This is the sort of thing which really shows the vast importance of civil aviation to the Empire.
The training in the past for civil aviation, outside the Royal Air Force training, has to a large extent been done by light aeroplane clubs. The service these clubs have rendered to the country by making people air-minded has been of greater value than almost anything else from the aviation point of view. The future of the light aeroplane clubs is with the young men. I am one of those who believe that if we are to be citizens of this country we must make some sacrifice for our citizenship. We cannot just sit at home and expect everything for nothing—improved housing, better education, Beveridge Reports and all sorts of other things—without giving something


in return. I hope that we shall never go away from some form of compulsory military training in this country. When a man has the rights of citizenship—employment, decent wages, decent conditions—he should in return serve his country for a definite term. That could be done through the youth services. Those who wished to serve in the Air Force would go through the Air Training Corps.
We should make full use of the light aeroplane club movement by taking our boys when they become 18 and teaching them to fly under R.A.F. instructors at the light aeroplane clubs as centres. In that way we should get a reserve of aviation which would be of enormous value and importance should we ever get involved in such a war as this. I am certain that there must be some give and take with people and that they must make some sacrifice for the country if they wish to be citizens and take all that the country gives them. This training could be done through the light aeroplane clubs, and it would well repay the expenditure of the Government, because the boys would be on the reserve of the R.A.F. at the age of 20, having had 50 hours' training with the clubs. It would be of enormous advantage to the Government and to the boys themselves. We are grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud for initiating this Debate and for his excellent speech. I hope that as a result of the Debate we shall get a reorganised start of civil aviation after the war on completely new lines, on the lay-out of 1943 and not on the lay-out of before the last war.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Dennis Herbert): Colonel Elliot.

Captain Cunningham-Reid: On a point of procedure, may I point out that four Conservatives running have been called? Have not the Independents a right to be called? This is not a meeting of the Carlton Club.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: The hon. and gallant Member is making an observation which is quite out of Order.

Lieut.-Colonel Elliot: I make no apology for intervening in this Debate, and having been called by

you, Sir, I consider I have a perfect right to address the House. The hon. Member who introduced this subject owes no apology to the House for having done so. He has taken a great interest in it and delivered a speech which was of the greatest interest to the House and a worthy introduction to the subject. The Secretary of State for Air will have heard from the observations which his hon. and gallant Friend the Under-Secretary may have made to him that there is a general demand in the House to be reassured that plans are in existence and are actively being pressed on for the developments which we say are bound to be one of the features of the post-war world. He will know, none better, that the great thing we are deploring in the case of tanks is that while there were in the case of aeroplanes designs and plans and prototypes of machines which were capable of great and rapid reproduction of a type second to none in the world, there was no such machine in existence in the case of tanks. We are, therefore, still suffering in this case from the enormous time-lag between getting a thing on to the drawing board and getting it from the drawing board into reproduction. I am sure the House is not at all convinced that there is at present on the drawing board a machine fit to take its place in the post-war world with the enormous plans of development which we see under way on the other side of the Atlantic. Many of us who have had our attention forced on this by recent developments realise that it may well be that the industrial set-up of the world will undergo a transformation in the near future in some sense comparable to the transformation which occurred when the internal combustion engine came to supplement and to some extent replace the coal-burning engine. In many parts of the world which did not see developments coming they fell far behind and have not been able to make up the leeway since.
Some hon. Members have concentrated on the fact that after the war it will be necessary for this country to have something in which to fly. I would put forward a plea that it should have something to fly to. The planning of the machines must also cover the planning of the air ports, the great air harbours which will be necessary in this country. This is a small island, and it is necessary to make sure of the location of the great central


stations which the air lines of the world will use because the geographical position of this country will again be of the greatest importance to its future history. Lying as it does on the rim of the Western Ocean, it is at the hub of international aviation, and it may well be that it will occupy in aviation a place as important as that which it now occupies in international telephoning—or did before the war. There was a small unobtrusive building in the City of London and anyone who wanted to telephone from any part of the United States to any part of Europe—and to many parts of Asia as well—had to speak through London, being put through by our telephone operators to whatever place he wished to communicate with. Here we have a necessity for planning, and therefore I hope very much that we shall have the views of the Paymaster-General. I was glad to see him in his place at the beginning of this Debate, although I must say it is a pity that neither the Paymaster-General nor the Under-Secretary of State for Air was able to watch with us for even one hour. The subject goes far beyond the Secretary of State for Air. When we see Uthwatt Reports and other Reports dealing with very shadowy things, in some respects very far in the future, we could well afford to give some time and some consideration to the lay out of these practical points which will arise at the Armistice immediately, with the movement of the civil tide which will then begin to flow. The speed factor in modern transport may gravely impair the maritime supremacy which this country has previously had by producing a vehicle which, as was said I think by the hon. Member who introduced the subject, will carry throughout the year a number of passengers equal to the number that could be carried by a great liner. It was said that six aeroplanes might carry throughout the year a number of passengers equal to the whole passenger load of the "Queen Mary" throughout the year. Those of us who are connected with great engineering centres like the Clyde realise that such a development might make the whole of that area, with its present equipment, obsolete, and it is a matter which demands the most urgent and continuous attention of His Majesty's Government.
Many hard things have been said against planners but on this occasion, at any rate, the House is at one. It desires plans and it believes that in this matter planning must be done by and with the aid of the Government and the great machinery of research and statistics which the Government has in its control. The House clearly believes also, I think, that the subject should be looked at not merely as an adjunct to the military side, not merely as a shadowy thing for the future, not even as an opportunity for international co-operation, important as that is, but as an immediate practical problem for British industry, for British design and British planning the moment the war comes to an end, and on those subjects I am sure the House will desire a very clear statement by the spokesman of the Government when he replies.

Mr. Montague: As other subjects fall to be discussed to-day, I will not intervene for more than a few minutes, but I should like to join In complimenting the opener of the Debate upon his extremely interesting and well-delivered speech. One thing I should like to say about that speech is that it disconcerted me and that I felt some regret to find that in opening a Debate of this character the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Perkins) should have spoken in archaic language about civil aviation in respect to the trade of this country and of our relations commercially with other countries. He used phrases such as "The race between us and America," "Looking America in the face," and "Bargaining upon equal terms," and he regretted the possibility of other people getting our trade. I agree with the right hon. and gallant Member for Kelvingrove (Lieut.-Colonel Elliot) when he suggested that the development of aviation upon the civil side after the war should be an opportunity for international co-operation. Ten years ago and later, when the formation of British Overseas Airways was discussed here, I and other Members of my party put forward the idea of public responsibility for civil aviation in this country and the principle of internationalisation in respect of aviation between this country and other countries, upon the ground, apart altogether from our own views as to public ownership and internationalism, that the air is not a personal thing, is not a private commercial thing, is not even a


national thing, tout is a medium which encompasses the whole world, and that there were many reasons for adopting a policy not merely of give and take but of developing a give and take between countries and for some measure of international control or at least international agreement in respect of these various air lines.
As the right hon. and gallant Member for Kelvingrove or some other hon. Member has mentioned, at that time and right up to this war we had the foolish spectacle of corridors in the air along which aeroplanes could not go because of the desire on the part of nations to keep secret their military plans. Those anomalies were due to the fact that we had considered the question of civil aviation from the point of view if not solely of commercial advantage certainly of national advantage, and I feel that now we have a splendid opportunity to review the whole question of civil aviation from the point of view of the world and the world's necessities after the war. That remark applies to a good many other subjects. We need to make a new start in many directions in view of the necessity for world planning, and I ask that in considering civil aviation after the war, and also what might be done before the end of the war to get it going upon sound principles, we should look closely to this question of world responsibility for the development of aviation.
I suppose we cannot accept the view that internationalism in a complete sense will be possible immediately after the war, but we have America, we have Russia, we have this country, and we have the other States of the United Nations, and we ought not to look at matters from the point of view of how we are going to race with each other for international trade but link it up with our economic necessities and the economic developments of the world in the future.
There is only one other point which I would like to raise, and it has to do with the subject of transport planes. This question seems to have been left so that we get the crumbs from the rich man's table, the rich man in this case being America. There is a comparison betwen the policy in respect of transport planes and the policy as regards dive-bombers. I cannot,

of course, enter into that question, with the many technical matters involved, but it seems that we have missed the bus—to use a phrase that has been used in this House before—in respect of transport planes, and that we are now dependent upon the left-overs of America, a country which, at the very beginning of this war, put its civil aviation, to all intents and purposes, to use. The hon. Member for Stroud pointed out that Curtiss and Douglas planes and other big planes had been adapted for transport purposes upon scientific lines, with the direct idea of linking up civil aviation with their national needs now and therefore with the needs of America immediately after the war.
If that can be done by America, we also should have done that kind of thing, but we are not using transport planes as we ought to use them. Even if we get a fair proportion from America, it seems likely that we shall not use them as Russia, for instance, is using them. There are a hundred-and-one ways in which transport planes can be used in the war effort. In the case of the Soviet Union, transport planes are used very much in the war effort. We know that Germany is using transport planes very largely over in Russia. The Russians have the advantage from the military point of view. They have used transport planes all along for military purposes, and not merely for carrying personnel. Soon after the war began, a committee in Washington reported to the effect that 90 per cent. of military supplies could be carried by aeroplane and 50 per cent. of civilian supplies. Russia has also realised that possibility. They not only carry supplies for military purposes between various parts of the front line, but they carry medical supplies, nurses, and other personnel. They also apply transport planes to war production. I can speak of conditions in this country from my own memory of the Ministry of Aircraft Production. When you wanted components taken from one part of this country to another while a blitz was on, as was often the case at that time, you sometimes had to wait for weeks, although the components were vitally needed, because train services were disorganised owing to war conditions. In Russia that does not happen. The Russians use transport planes from factory to factory as well as for military purposes.
I agree with the general trend of the discussion so far. We ought to look to our civil aviation, and view the necessities of this country in relation to the world, in respect to civil aviation. It could well be linked up with a more imaginative outlook on the part of the Ministries concerned affecting the development of transport planes now. I am sorry that so much has been left to chance in this matter. Here is a splendid opportunity to have fine planes, with fine designs now on the drawing board, ready to be taken off when the war is over, so that we shall be able to hold our own in the best sense of the word in respect to civil aviation. In talking about holding our own, I hope we shall not confine ourselves to the old idea that when we come to the end of the war we shall be finding spheres of influence and thinking of trade competition. We have to think of something more in the nature of world co-operation, or we shall otherwise want more transport planes and planes for military purposes before long for a war much more devastating than the present war has been, or may be before we finish with it.

Mrs. Tate: The House and the country owe a very great debt of gratitude to the hon. Member who so ably raised this matter in the House to-day. We know how often he raised it in the past, and we know also that the experience which he has had in this war has made him better qualified to raise it at present. I very much regret, considering the very short time which we have to consider this subject, that the Under-Secretary of State for Air did not find himself able to sit with us and to go without his meal until a later hour.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Air (Captain Harold Balfour): May I interrupt the hon. Lady to say that I have not had a meal?

Mrs. Tate: Whatever the right hon. and gallant Gentleman was doing, and I am glad that he has not had his meal, it was a very great pity that he did not find himself able to sit here during the whole course of this very short Debate. I am glad that those who so often pleaded the cause of civil aviation before the war have, deplorably, been proved right. They have the right to ask that mistakes which have been made heretofore shall not be

made again. We owe a very great debt to the men in the Air Force and to the home population for the part they are playing in the war. Unless this matter is treated with the seriousness which it deserves, we may very well find ourselves winning the war and losing the peace. I hope that due note will be made of the suggestions put forward by the hon. Member.
I hope also that we may go further than that. I would ask the Under-Secretary whether any real preparation is being made with regard to the sites of aerodromes on Empire air routes, and, far more important, to the starting of aerodromes on Empire air routes. Before the war, it was estimated in America that for every man in the air you needed 30 men on the ground. Certainly, as civil machines increase in power and complexity, an increasingly large number of ground personnel will be needed. We ought to have plans ready now or being prepared now, in order that, when the war ceases, we should know at once the number and type of ground personnel to draft to each aerodrome throughout the Empire routes. I would like to ask whether that is being done.
The hon. Member who spoke before me regretted that we had not got civil aviation as far as the drawing board stage, but that is wholly insufficient. All modern transport planes are being manufactured in America, and I believe that is a very great mistake, even in a war period. I know I shall be told that the needs of the war are so great that it is imperative to concentrate on fighting aircraft over here, but I believe that to be false economy and a false idea. I realise that I may be quite wrong and that my suggestion may be impracticable, but I would ask whether it is not possible to arrange for a larger proportion of fighting craft to be manufactured in America, and that at least some civil craft should be manufactured here. It is a matter of vital importance. Plans for the future are not enough, where this kind of manufacture is concerned. The Minister knows far better than I do that it is very many years before a plane can go from the design stage into the air. I do not think we can afford to leave it until after the war to bridge that gap.
Nor, I believe, have we even considered as we should have done the designs of the aircraft of the future. If the Air Ministry


make the mistakes they have made in the past, and continue to make them, and refuse to consider the immediate building of at least some civil machines over here, will they do this; will they arrange the air routes that are to be flown immediately on the cessation of war and bring them to such a stage of perfection that within a few months of the end of the war we shall be flying these prepared air routes at least with mails in converted bomber machines?
I do not advocate the converted bomber machine as a transport plane, but I do say that if we had our Empire air routes so well prepared that we could move adequate personnel there immediately hostilities had ceased, we could at least get our air routes flown with mails in converted bomber machines, and that would be infinitely preferable to not having the routes flown at all, which I greatly fear they will not be unless we show far more foresight in civil aviation than we did before. I would plead, as I have pleaded for so many years, that civil aviation should be taken out of the hands of the Air Ministry. That is of fundamental and vital importance. We urged the necessity for years before the war. I was the only Member of my own party who voted against the continuance of the subsidy to Imperial Airways until 1953, and every day I live I feel more convinced that that vote was a right vote. I am not happy about the present British Overseas Airways Corporation, but I do believe that a matter as important as civil aviation should either be under a Department of its own or under the Board of Trade. In no case should it be left under the Air Ministry, for indeed civil aviation in this country has perished under the administration of the Air Ministry in the past, and nothing in the past should make us feel it is right to leave it in those hands in the future.

Mr. A. Edwards: One thing is quite certain, and that is that immediately after the war we shall have to use airways long before we have adequate supplies of shipping. It is of vital importance, as has been stressed today, that we must think about this problem now, and as Pan-American Airways have got so far ahead of us, I can see no way out except by a full investigation with a view to getting some international arrangement. We shall never overtake

Pan-American Airways the way we are going. It is of vital importance that we should have the fullest investigation into this question of the British Overseas Airways Corporation. As one advocating in this House and in the country Government control and in some cases nationalisation, I only do so in so far as it will bring greater efficiency and public good. I have given some pretty horrible examples of inefficiency where Government funds are concerned. This Company is one, and I would like to quote one or two others.
I would like particularly to raise a question of British Overseas Airways administration, which I said yesterday I would speak about to-day. I asked a Question yesterday about the dismissal of Squadron-Leader Geoffrey Cooper, and I want to tell the House briefly what happened in this case. It was a case of his being much too efficient, much too go ahead. As a matter of fact he was probably a little self-assertive, but he was a man with some vision of what Overseas Airways should be, and what the organisation of our air transport should be in the future. He dared to express himself. It is provided in the Act that the managerial staff should have the right to make representations when they think that something is wrong. Speaking for practically the whole of the managerial staff he made representations. As a result he was sent abroad. He went to Asmara, where he was paid £1,000 a year with full keep and nothing whatever to do; he was simply sent out of this country because he was a bit of a nuisance. He dared to protest and wrote to other colleagues, pointing out what was happening out there, that nobody out there had a single thing to do and that people were drawing salaries of which they were thoroughly ashamed. He said he would rather go back into the R.A.F. and do his bit.
Here a remarkable thing happened. The censor, in contravention of the Official Secrets Act, intercepted the letter and sent a copy of it to the Director-General of the Overseas Airways Corporation, who, after an investigation, sent a signal to say that this man was to be sent home for dismissal—I have seen the original wording—before hearing him, before considering his report. He did return home and was accordingly dismissed. I have reason to suppose that practically the whole of the staff have in recent weeks


again met and expressed their views, perhaps not officially yet, on this very serious situation of British Overseas Airways. It will be one of the most colossal fiascos we have had in this country if something is not done. It is thoroughly inefficient. It is a thorough disgrace to this House for not having taken action earlier on the administration of the Air Ministry. Another Department should look after commercial aviation. It should be removed from the Air Ministry at once. That is all I have to say about that particular case. The hon. Member who opened this Debate pointed out that the pilots got satisfaction when they as a body made representations. The only way there will be response will be by the managerial staff, who are practically unanimous, making representations and the Department taking the necessary notice.
It has been said that it is no use looking back. It is if we can avoid making blunders in the future. The question of Sir Roy Fedden has been raised. About two years ago he was being sent abroad to America, entirely against his will. He wanted to do his duty in this country. He realised more than any other man in this country what was needed. I have had the privilege of seeing some reports he submitted to the Government in 1936 and 1937, and he was told that the programme he outlined could not be afforded. He is a man of outstanding vision and engineering skill. At a time when he is developing new engines, some still on the secret list, which will be required for the future development of civil aviation, he is again being sent to America. On the former occasion I pointed out that it was some of the back numbers of the back room who wanted to be rid of him. He was a nuisance, but he was a genius, and some geniuses are a bit of a nuisance. He was a man with vision, and he was being sent to America. I said, and Members will find this statement practically word for word in the OFFICIAL REPORT, that if the Minister had any sense this man, who was being compelled to leave the country, would be kept here. I pay this tribute to Lord Beaverbrook. He got on the Atlantic telephone, and brought the man back to this country. The man was back within a fortnight. This man has built up the Bristol Aeroplane Co. He spent 20 years building up that company.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I would remind the hon. Member of the very recent Debate we had on this subject, in which, if my memory is not at fault, the hon. Member himself said all these things.

Mr. Edwards: But the question of the design of engines is essential to the subject we are discussing. The size of planes depends on types of engine, and that is a matter connected with the man I am discussing. What I want to say—it has never been said in this House—is that this company has had £14,500,000 of the Government's money, yet the Government have not a representative on the Board of Directors, and the company are in a position to dismiss the man who is essential for bringing out these designs. It is a matter of the control of organisations which have vast sums of public money. Take another company, which has developed what should be the most wonderful engine in the world, the "Sabre." It is still unsatisfactory. We have had a director of that company drawing £12,000 a year for the last 12 years. Now they make a deal with another company, because they are inefficient, and they get an immense sum as compensation. It is a disgraceful thing that public funds should be used in this way. From this compensation award their earnings would be between £300,000 and £400,000. The Department is providing £750,000 for a fictitious transaction, to buy some property which is being relet to the company in order that they may finance this deal. There are two cases in which private companies are being allowed to use public money in this way. Every important aeroplane manufacturing company at this moment is having trouble with or has parted with its principal designers and engineers. It is strange that when we are developing the most important engines these men should be treated in this way.

Mr. Simmonds: Is the hon. Member criticising my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Air? I fail to see where the Secretary of State comes in.

Mr. Edwards: Previous speakers in this Debate have raised the question of the engines that will be required in future. I am trying to show that, no matter what else you do, if you neglect engine designs you will never get anywhere. It is essential that the men who can design engines


should be kept here, and that they should be happy here. I doubt whether Sir Roy Fedden, who has been sent to America, will ever come back. The Americans are ready to buy men of that type. It has been said in the past that ours is an Empire on which the suns never sets. People will say in future that it is an Empire on which the sun never sets but on whose Ministers the light never dawns. Now is the time to take some steps. I have quoted in this House, and I will give the names and details again to any Minister who requires them, facts to show that in hardly a case of this kind which I have raised has there not been victimisation of individuals as a result. Men with the welfare of this country at heart, who dared to risk everything, have reported the position to somebody who could take action, and they have been victimised. The latest cases are Sir Roy Fedden and Squadron-Leader Cooper. The Minister directed that Squadron-Leader Cooper should be made a director of that company. The company, with £14,500,000 of public money, refused point-blank, and the Minister was weak enough to climb down. If we are going to use public money in private enterprises, we must see that we get a fair return, and that they employ people who have vision, who will develop industries that are so important to the future development of the Empire. Let there be no more victimisation of the people who have the courage and patriotism to come to this House and expose the position when their immediate superiors have refused to listen to them.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Air (Captain Harold Balfour): By arrangement, I am replying on behalf of the Government, although the Debate has ranged—

Mr. Granville: Before the right hon. and gallant Gentleman replies, might I point out that this Debate, which is on a very important subject, has been in progress for only an hour and a half, half-an-hour having been taken up by a very important statement after Questions? Would the Minister consider allowing this Debate to go on for another half-hour?

Captain Balfour: The hon. Member knows that it is not in my hands to say how on a Motion for the Adjournment the time should be allotted to any subject.

I was saying that I am replying for the Government, although the Debate has ranged over a wide number of subjects, affecting other Departments than that which I serve. I hope that hon. and right hon. Gentlemen will excuse me if I cannot, in the comparatively limited time at my disposal, answer all the detailed questions which have been put. But there are one or two particular matters to which I would refer. I would like first to deal with the speech of the hon. Member for East Middlesbrough (Mr. A. Edwards), and in particular with his reference to the case of Squadron-Leader Cooper, about which he questioned me yesterday, and which he said that he was going to raise to-day. The hon. Gentleman put forward, firstly, general strictures on the management of the British Overseas Airways Corporation, and then dealt in particular with the case of Squadron-Leader Cooper. On the general issue, Parliament decided to give independence of management, carried through on commercial lines, to this public corporation, as it has done to other public corporations, and such independence of management must include, as I think the House will agree, rights of internal administration and control, including the engagement of staff and dispensation with their services. It would be an impossible position for those to whom the management of public corporations has been delegated if, on the one hand, we gave them independence and, on the other hand, we tried to exercise, almost the next moment, a restriction on their freedom in operating the functions we have given them. The security of this House and of the Government lies in the powers that my right hon. Friend possesses. He can remove the Board, he can remove individual members of it, he can add to the Board; but unless the Secretary of State considers that on grounds of public interest such a drastic step is necessary he will leave the management alone to carry on their own affairs.
As regards the case of Squadron-Leader Cooper, the hon. Gentleman asked me yesterday whether the services of this officer were dispensed with because he had voiced the widespread dissatisfaction among the senior staff, and whether I would cause an inquiry to be made into all the circumstances. In a Supplementary Question he asked me whether this officer was dismissed only after a copy of a


private letter criticising officials had been sent to the Director of Overseas Airways by the censor, which the hon. Member alleged was an irregular thing to do. That was the first time I had heard it alleged that a private letter was sent by this employee and was supposed to have been intercepted and reported to the British Overseas Airways Corporation. I had thought that he was dealing with some 40 pages of complaints which this officer had sent forward and which document, indeed, the Corporation has not hesitated at all to hand to me on my request. I have made inquiries—it might interest hon. Members to know that they lasted until about midnight last night—and it is clear as a result of the inquiries I made in the short time at my disposal since answering the Question of the hon. Member, that his Supplementary Question made certain new statements purporting to show that the termination of this officer's employment was due in some part to the receipt by the Corporation overseas of information derived from censorship sources, and that this might be so. Whether the Corporation should have received such information and whether they were correct to base part of their case, if indeed they did, upon it, are matters into which inquiry must be made by the appropriate authorities. I am not responsible for censorship overseas, but as this event took place some months ago and some 5,000 miles away such inquiries must of necessity take time. In order that there shall be no suggestion that this officer is in any way prejudiced because of these events the Corporation has informed me that the notice terminating his services has meanwhile been suspended.

Mr. A. Edwards: May I have this point made clear? The Minister has just made a very fair statement. Do I understand that he is pressing for the inquiry to be made, or is it to be done by another Department, and can he confirm whether this particular letter was received by the Director-General from the Censor?

Captain Balfour: No, Sir. I have not had time to go fully into the details, but I am informed that the Corporation did receive some communication from censorship sources. Whether it should or should not have received it is an open question still, and whether it did or did not take that into account at arriving at the grounds of dismissal is also an

open question still. These questions must be investigated. The first is a matter for various Government Departments, and the second is a matter for the Corporation, but until these issues have been decided, I repeat, the Corporation has informed me that the notice terminating his services have meanwhile been suspended.
I would like to deal with one more particular point, before I come to the main issues, and with which the hon. Gentleman who initiated this Debate opened this statement, and I am sure that he will accept what I say in the spirit in which I reply to him. I was glad to hear him say that the relationship between the civil pilots and those who are in charge of their activities has never been better or franker, but he said the pilots felt somewhat aggrieved that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister had flown with a United States pilot. I will only say that the pilot in question is a pilot serving with the Royal Air Force Ferry Command, a man of great distinction and experience, and, furthermore, the Prime Minister, as records will show, has flown both with British Overseas Airways Corporation captains and with Ferry Command pilots, a fair division of the honour of doing that particular job. There is such an abundance of talent among experienced captains that it is a matter of choice according to operational expediency whether he should go in one particular aircraft flown by one particular pilot or another.
I now want to come to the general Debate. I do not disagree at all with what I would term the forward view of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Stroud (Mr. Perkins) and others who took part in this Debate, nor do I quarrel with his statement when he says that there are disturbed feelings in the House. This is quite understandable, and I hope that what I say to-day will show that more has gone on than hon. Members, of necessity, hitherto have known and also the reasons why some of the questions which have been asked to-day and others which other hon. Members would have liked to ask cannot be answered in full. The theme running through this Debate has been, "Do something now." I think I have summarised it fairly well. There is a universal acceptance of the importance of air transport for our national future.


There is no question about that, and the Government realise that as much as hon. Members who initiated this Debate, but the background of the whole picture must be that during the war the extent of our support to civil aviation has had to be measured by its contribution to the war effort. We have had to apply our available resources in terms of value rendered to that war effort. Our sole purpose—the sole purpose of every hon. and right hon. Member of this House—is to win the war, and where air transport can help, there we can support it, but, on the other hand, where there has had to be given a greater priority for some other requirement, then such priority has had to have preference over our air transport supplies. That is a fact which applies not only to equipment but to the operation of routes.
The hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Erdington (Group Captain Wright) and one or two other Members said that it was a great mistake to "sacrifice the African route." As the hon. Lady the Member for Frome (Mrs. Tate) will probably remember, when she tackled me in no uncertain terms, as she always does, in the Air Debate last year on the Pan-American entry into Africa, I said what I repeat to-day, that we are glad to see the United States, formerly Pan-American Airways and now militarised as part of the United States Air Corps, in Africa or anywhere else if by so flying these routes they help in our combined war effort to win the war. We have had to concentrate upon first things first, both in routes and equipment, and our first need has been to build up an air force to beat the Luftwaffe wherever it may be met. It is worth remembering that we started this war with a big leaway in first-line strength and the balance has had to be struck as regards the conflicting calls upon our limited resources.
There is no hon. Member in this House who would not like to see a bomber force of sufficient strength and reserve to keep up a sustained effort of a thousand aircraft a night raids. That commands universal approval among all Members of the House. There are many hon. Gentlemen who are anxious to see that the Army have all the air support it will require, a sentiment which commands universal approbation. There is not an hon. Gentleman who would not advocate giving the

Middle East its full requirements in aircraft, ample supplies of all types. We must have air-borne divisions. There is probably not one hon. Gentleman who would object to that statement, but they, of course, need hundreds of aircraft. The Fleet Air Arm must have its share of our capacity. We would all like to see air transport have its requirements met in full. But having said that, we come down to the fundamental fact that we all have to face, that you cannot get more than a pint out of a pint pot. If we had tried to satisfy every demand at any one time, we should have succeeded in satisfying no one and would have achieved nothing positive in any direction. I submit to the House that only those who have the responsibility and knowledge—and, with respect, that is not the critics to whom I have listened to-day—of what are our demands and what are our available resources to meet those demands who can properly judge where the balance should be as between the conflicting needs, including air transport. I claim that the result of the air warfare up to now justifies those who have had the responsibility for these decisions up to date.
I would like to refer for a moment to the statement made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud when he talked about air transport having just a few crumbs from the rich man's table. Well, the crumbs of equipment provided have been worth £5,000,000 during 1942. They have been not such dusty crumbs; indeed, they have been quite substantial crumbs. My hon. Friend asked me about the new equipment coming to the British Overseas Airways Corporation. I am sure the House will appreciate that I cannot give the exact figures, as they would be of value to the enemy, but he is right in saying that a considerable number of Sunderland flying boats are coming to the Corporation. I must, however, correct him on one point, when he said it would be tantamount to a disaster if these aircraft were allowed to fly without fully feathering airscrews, known technically as hydromatic airscrews. We intend to fit these aircraft with these airscrews, but their supply lags behind the supply of aircraft, and we shall at first put these flying boats into operation without these hydromatic airscrews. But a consolation to him and to the pilots who will fly them is that Sunderland aircraft have


been flying with the Royal Air Force without this particular fitment for several years, doing gallant service under very arduous conditions and often flying back, after an engine has been put out of action.
Hitherto we have had to concentrate our manufacturing resources on combat types of aircraft, and it is only now, for the first time since this huge struggle in the air started, that we can commence to lift our eyes from the immediate requirements of combat aircraft to supplying some part of the needs of our war effort in terms of British transport aircraft. The then Minister of Aircraft Production, on 14th July last, told the House that we had to look to the United States for our transport planes and that while the Government did intend to deal with future construction of cargo-carrying aircraft in this country and while at the present stage of the war effort all our expert engineers had to devote their skill to war work, we had, nevertheless, tried converting one of our bombers into a transport plane. I take issue with my hon. Friend when he mentioned that particular type and says that it is only a converted bomber. It is, in fact, a virtual redesign of that aircraft. The Minister said that an order had been given in March and that when he made his speech in July the aeroplane was actually flying. Since then it has been doing extended trials, it is now in production and deliveries in considerable numbers will take place next year.
I would, however, be misleading my hon. Friend and the House if I said that there was any prospect within the next few months early in 1943 of that aircraft coming forward in sufficient numbers for us to be able to think of it in terms of transport for the British Overseas Airways Corporation. I sincerely hope that the time will come—and I shall do my best to press for it—when we shall be able to get some of these aircraft for British Overseas Airways Corporation, but it is no good thinking that it will be next January, February or March because the aircraft has yet to be produced in numbers. In spite of this effort on our own part and of now being able to lift our eyes for the first time to the supply of our own transport needs, we must face the fact that with the combined resources of the United States and ourselves in the common pool for the common good of the

common cause we shall have to continue to look to the United States for the bulk of our transport demands for the next two or three years of the war.

Mr. Granville: Will the right hon. and gallant Gentleman deal with the question of the design of civil aircraft? As he knows, almost every large concern in America has a design on the drawing board. One of the great difficulties in this country after the war will be in the change-over of the aircraft industry from a war to a peace footing. Can he say whether his Department and the Ministry of Aircraft Production have been through the industry to see whether civil aircraft designers are being employed on war production? If not, could they be put onto civil design now?

Captain Balfour: I can assure the hon. Gentleman that designers in the aircraft industry are being used to the full at the present time. The particular responsibility, however, of seeing when we can switch over design capacity from combat to civil types is not one for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Air or myself. It is one for the Ministry of Aircraft Production, but I can tell the hon. Gentleman that at the moment our designing capacity is predominantly occupied with combat types.

Mr. Granville: May I put this point, because it is very important? To my knowledge there are experienced designers in the aircraft industry of this country working on sub-contract engineering. Has the right hon. and gallant Gentleman's Department, in co-operation with the Ministry of Aircraft Production, been through their names to see whether they can be put on to preliminary plans now for the design of civil aircraft after the war?

Captain Balfour: It is essentially the responsibility of the Minister of Aircraft Production, and no doubt he will read the hon. Gentleman's remarks. I will deal in a moment with the general picture of design and development of civil aircraft, but I want now if I may to refer to the post-war position. The Government want to go ahead wherever possible. We must look at post-war civil aviation in a big way. It is one of the major tasks of national reconstruction and must be approached in the determination that we must learn lessons from the past—some


of which have been quoted to-day—and not be prejudiced by what has gone before in our willingness to introduce new methods to deal with new problems.

Earl Winterton: I presume that when my right hon. and gallant Friend says that he means that in every possible way, through every diplomatic channel open to us, it will be represented to our American Allies and friends that the fact that they are now running particular services through particular parts of the Empire during the war does not mean that they will have any right to do so after the war? That is the crux of the whole matter.

Captain Balfour: That is well understood. To use a colloquialism, we have agreed on the highest level with the Americans that as regards routes they are now running for military purposes on lines which may have commercial values "all bets are off" at the end of the war.

Lieut.-Colonel Sir Thomas Moore: Can my right hon. and gallant Friend give us any information as regards the future of the Atlantic terminal airport in this country? Can he say whether it will be retained in British hands?

Captain Balfour: No, Sir. I could not possibly, without notice, give information on that comparatively detailed but important point. I repeat, we must be prepared to learn lessons from the past and not be prejudiced by what has gone before; we must be willing to be fresh in our outlook and to introduce new methods. The hon. Lady the Member for Frome (Mrs. Tare) said that civil aviation should be taken away from the Air Ministry. The hon. Member for Melton (Sir Lindsay Everard) said that there should be a Secretary for Civil Aviation. Do not let us turn our minds against any of those things. Though I stand here as the representative of the Air Ministry, I am not going to say that it is right for ever that civil aviation should remain with the Air Ministry or that it should go from it. We have to start with fresh minds and a fresh outlook on all these, problems.
I want now to deal with the point that was raised by the hon. Member for Eye (Mr. Granville). Although we are limited by the exigencies of war and we cannot divert any large amount of designing staff to the preparation of purely civil types,

because the designing staff is fully occupied on war jobs, nevertheless we can now start thinking and planning without detriment to our war effort, and this we are doing. As regards aircraft, the Ministry of Aircraft Production and the Air Ministry are working in close concert on various aspects of post-war civil equipment. We have co-operation—and I think the House will be interested to know this—on the application of war-time radio devices and radio aids to peace-time needs. That is going on now and it has been going on for some time. This work is necessarily secret, but I can assure the House that it is being carried on with the determination that when peace comes our civil transport effort will have the advantage of quick adaptation of war-time practice to peace-time requirements, and I believe the turning of this work into peaceful channels will introduce an unthought-of era of safety in air-line navigation. The Ministry of Aircraft Production and the Air Ministry are working closely on the broad design requirements for types of civil aircraft after the war. In reply to the hon. Member for Eye, of course, any civil aircraft after the war must of necessity have de-icing apparatus as part of its equipment. There is, as the hon. Member for Frome said, the dual problem of converting existing types of bomber aircraft to civil transport use during the interim period immediately after the war. Then there is the second more long-distance problem which must be tackled now—I mean long-distance only in the time that will be taken to solve it—of the design and construction of entirely new types for civil purposes.

ROYAL ASSENT

Message to attend the Lords Commissioners.

The House went; and having returned—

Mr. SPEAKER reported the Royal Assent to:

1. Expiring Laws Continuance Act, 1942.
2. Supreme Court (Northern Ireland) Act, 1942.
3. National Service Act, 1942.
4. Edinburgh Merchant Company Endowments (Amendment) Order Confirmation Act, 1942.

ADJOURNMENT (CHRISTMAS)

CIVIL AVIATION

Question again proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."

Captain Balfour: As I was saying, even if we cannot actually build civil aircraft at present because of our war needs, we can, at any rate, plan out the broad types likely to be needed.
There are many big issues yet to be decided by the Government, perhaps advised by bodies which may be specially set up for this purpose.

Mr. Simmonds: Have the Government considered instead of setting up an outside body, having a Joint Standing Committee of both Houses to go into this question of civil aviation?

Captain Balfour: Obviously I cannot say anything about that to-day, except that I am sure those responsible for setting up any bodies that may be decided upon in the future will take due note of my hon. Friend's suggestion.

Mr. Granville: Is the Air Ministry or the Ministry of Aircraft Production responsible for the design of any future civil aircraft?

Captain Balfour: We are working in close concert. The Ministry of Aircraft Production is responsible for design of all aircraft.

Mr. Granville: Then why, in an important Debate of this kind, has there been no representative of the Ministry of Aircraft Production present?

Captain Balfour: Because the Debate has ranged over many subjects, affecting more than one Department, and it has been decided that I should do my best to represent the views of those Departments. Whatever may be the answer as to these big issues which have yet to be decided, such as the method of operation of civil aircraft after the war, for instance, my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Erdington raised the question whether we should have one or more chosen instruments; then the question has been raised whether civil aviation should stay with the Air Ministry; then there is the question whether a special Minister should be

responsible for civil aviation and whether existing transport interests should participate and, if so, in what form or what international instrument should be set up for ensuring maximum safety for travellers or for a common air port policy—whatever may be the answer to these various issues, one thing is sure: We are determined to have our place in the air transport system of the world for the British Commonwealth of Nations to link up its own interests with those of the other nations of the world.
For this we and the whole world will need aircraft and in large numbers. At the end of the war we may be faced with two alternatives unless we safeguard the position now as far as we are able. Either we shall have to contemplate closing down a large part of the aircraft industry, employing more than 1,000,000 workers, and hope that the industrial labour market will be able to absorb and use the skill of those men elsewhere, or we shall have to continue building bombers and fighters for which there may be little or no use in the numbers that we shall be producing at the end of the war.
It is because the Government are determined that this shall not happen that we are prepared to take bold decisions as to what we are to do in the future. Post-war civil aviation is but one piece in the jigsaw of the building-up of the post-war world, the preparation and co-ordination of which, as far as this country is concerned, is in the hands of the Paymaster-General. But I am authorised to say that the Government are now actively considering what these bold measures should be and what form they should take. If decisions can be properly taken now, we shall certainly take them. If further examination is required, this shall be arranged for in the best form to reach a speedy conclusion. In either case the House will be fully informed as soon as we are in a position to do so. I repeat, in conclusion, that only now for the first time are we able to lift our eyes from the immediate, urgent needs of the present to look to the possibilities of the future. Only the Government can decide when this can properly be done, and the Government will inform Parliament as soon as possible of the steps which they recommend should be taken to found a policy for post-war civil aviation which shall be worthy of our people.

COAL DISTRIBUTION

Mr. Buchanan: After the wider subject which we have just been discussing, I wish to call attention to a matter of more domestic concern. I must begin by expressing regret to the Minister and to the House that the hon. Member who it was originally intended should raise the matter of coal distribution, my colleague who sits for Finsbury (Mr. Woods) is not able to be present. I am sure the whole House will regret that his absence is caused by illness. I am in a rather difficult position, because I had only intended to intervene very briefly in the Debate in order to deal with the local position in Glasgow. If I had known that I should be given the chance of stating the case generally, I would have made every effort to get to know the position outside my own locality, because this is a problem which does not affect only Glasgow or the West of Scotland. Other places have their difficulties, and I regret that my hon. Friend is not able to be here, because he is connected with a movement largely concerned with the distribution of coal in the country and therefore has access to a wider range of information and thought on the subject.
In stating the position in my native city and in the West of Scotland, I wish to deal with three points. Firstly, I want to refer to the amount of coal held in stock by householders and the difficulties of tenement dwellers in that regard; secondly, to the quality of coal supplied; and thirdly, to the price. May I say at the outset that in considering the position in Glasgow one has to remember that that city is unique in the matter of housing? The position in regard to housing is very different from that in most parts of the country. I do not think it is a secret we need try to keep from the enemy that Glasgow has a population of over 1,000,000 people collected in a city in which the distance from one end to the other is comparatively short. There are districts of the city like my own which you can walk across in from 20 minutes to half-an-hour, and yet in that area there are packed over 100,000 people. The first thing to remember in dealing with the position of these folk is that they have nowhere to store coal in any quantity. Many of them, even if they had the space to store it, have not money enough to buy coal in any quantity.
I know there is a feeling that everybody is now well off, but that is far from true. Those who are in the Services are certainly not well off. I do not want to get on to debatable ground, but nobody would say their pay is lavish. Even men working in the shipyards are not well off. If you take the case of the labourer in a Clyde shipyard, his standard wage is £3 6s. a week. He is not on piece work, and if it were not for overtime pay added to his normal wage he would have a hard struggle, particularly if he has children, to live on that wage, when you deduct transport and other expenses. To say that everyone is well off is just not true.
But even if they were in an economic position to enable them to buy coal, the great bulk of the people can only store three cwts. or if they put some into pails and other receptacles four cwts. at the most. I stress that point, because weeks and weeks have passed in Glasgow before certain people have been supplied with coal. It is fortunate that we have not so far had extreme winter weather. A man said to me in Glasgow a little while ago that we had had better weather so far this winter than we had in the summer, and that is true. The weather has been magnificent, and it has been a treat to walk to the football match on Saturday afternoon, whereas in the middle of summer we were feeling cold.
But though we have been fortunate in the matter of weather, it is not a defensible position that people should have had to wait as long as six weeks for delivery of a bag of coal. It makes me feel more strongly than ever that we made a mistake in not going on with a rationing scheme. I admit that when my attention was called to the matter and I took it up with the authorities, they acted with great promptitude, and soon everybody got a supply of coal, but it is not everybody who can run at a particular moment to a Member of Parliament. I must say in fairness that the authorities did act with promptitude, but I do not want people to be anything like that time without coal. If we have an extreme winter such as we had three years ago, when the consumption of fuel must be great, it would be criminal to leave people in that position. The Minister has laid it down—I am speaking from memory, but I think I am correct—that up to the 31st of this month 15 cwts. of coal might be delivered to a


house and the householder might carry a stock of 30 cwts. But what is the actual position?
The people who can stock 30 cwts. of coal are comfortably-off people. I do not say they are rich, and I do not say anything against them, because I like people to be comfortably off. Moreover, they live in what we call ground-floor houses. A coal man is only an ordinary human being, and if he can sell, as he is allowed to sell, eight bags of coal at a time 10 one customer on the ground floor, he is going to do that rather than carry eight bags to eight different customers up three storeys. That is human nature, and I make no reflection on him. The consequence is that coal is delivered to the comfortably-off people who can take it in quantities involving the minimum of trouble in delivery. If people able to store up to 30 cwts., and able to buy up to 15 cwts. in two months, are to get coal, while other sections of the population are not getting anything, that is a completely indefensible position. Anybody who knows the great Co-operative movement, as most of us do—and the knowledge is not confined to us but is possessed by every type of person in the country—knows that they are great distributors and that no body tries to keep within the law in carrying out their work more than they do. In parts of Glasgow, such, for instance, as Pollokshaw, all that the customer is now getting is one cwt. of coal per week and they are not able to store any. It should be borne in mind that most of these people have no gas or electrical heating. If they have electric light it is only an afterthought and has been fitted in the houses recently. The great mass of the people have to provide their own heat for cooking, heating and washing.
We hear a lot nowadays about the need for family allowances. If there is one need that these people have in the middle of winter more than any other, it is heat, hot water and decencies for children. In this district the great bulk of the men do the dirtiest work. That reminds me that when I was a young candidate in Falkirk, I found that the men who did the dirtiest work made baths, but they had neither a public bath nor private baths in their houses. Many of the men in Pollokshaw are moulders on work that must be dirty and at shipyards which in

the nature of the work is dirty too. Some are miners. Yet one cwt. of coal per week is their only allowance. The Co-operative society stopped taking in orders for coal. From their point of view that is a defensible position, but the circumstance should be such that orders for coal from people who need it should not have to be refused. Coal should be sold to people if they require it and nobody should be allowed to refuse to take an order. The position has not yet grown acute because of the weather, but on certain days I have seen pitiful scenes of women trying to get coal. I do not want to see a repetition of last winter and the winter before when people in the tenements were crying out for coal and could not get it.
Let me say a word about the quality. It is bad enough to have only one cwt. a week, but it is much worse when it is found that there is a good proportion of stone in the coal. When people who are living on the ordinary soldier's allowance have to pay 2s. 10d. or 3s. for one cwt. of coal and find chunks of stone in it, it is just too bad. The Minister has rightly said that during war-time we cannot expect to have things as they were in peace-time. He forgets, however, that that many of these poor people never got good coal and they cannot stand having coal which is of poorer quality still. It is easy for me who can get a good quality in ordinary times to put up with a reduction of the quality. It is difficult enough to burn this poor quality coal in modern houses where the grates have a forced draught, but in the grates of old-fashioned houses it is more than ever difficult to burn it, I ask the Minister, therefore, not merely to see that the people for whom I am speaking get their supplies of coal, but that they should get coal of better quality so that when they spend 3s. on a bag they are not defrauded. If any of you bought an article which turned out to be not the article you paid for, the seller could be prosecuted. In the case of coal, however, it seems as if nothing can be done about it.
There is another subject on which the Minister ought to speak to his local people. In Glasgow, where the tenement houses are usually three storeys high and occasionally four, it is not an easy job to carry coal upstairs. I suggest that some attempt should be made for the winter


months by the Minister and the Minister of Labour to see that none of the younger men who do that work are called up. Old men cannot do it nor can medical rejects from the Army. The average merchant and the Co-operative Society are ordinary decent people, but my attention has been called to the practice of a small group to claim extra money for carrying coal to the top flights. That may be legal and I have heard that it is, but it seems terrible that poor people, merely because they live on a top storey, should have to pay an extra charge. I trust that it will be stopped at once and I think that if the Minister would say that he did not condone it and that it should stop, that is all that needs to be done. To be fair I do not think that many merchants do it.
I also have a word to say about the price of coal. I am not going to debate the whole question of the increase in price announced the other day, because that is too wide an issue, but I wish to point out that it was said that the increase would not operate until 1st January, and while I was walking down the street I saw coal lorries which had been selling coal at 2s. 10d. a cwt. mark the price up to 3s. I wonder why that should be. The Minister ought to look into it. I am told by owners as well as merchants that there is a tendency to get round things by saying that it is a better quality of coal which they are selling, but I hope that no dodges of that kind will be resorted to in order to enhance the price of coal. Many working people find it difficult to pay present prices.
If I have shown that I am worried about the conditions in the City of Glasgow I would add that I am concerned not merely with Glasgow but with Motherwell, Coatbridge, Airdrie and Greenock, districts where similar conditions prevail and where there is a large population engaged on very vital work. If there is a lack of heating and warmth through the scarcity of coal that may have peculiar effects in other directions. The Minister of Labour, too, ought to take notice of this, because many married women are going to work in factories—the great bulk of them voluntarily. When they go out to work they leave domestic duties at home, and a woman cannot be expected to go to her work if she knows that she has no coal at home for the needs of her

family. She will go searching for coal, or she will wait in for it to be delivered. If we want to keep women regularly at their work in factories we must see that coal is supplied to their homes in decent quantities—and coal that can be burned, not stone. In the city of Glasgow there is genuine apprehension about coal supplies—I will not say alarm; there is a feeling that all that is possible is not being done. The Minister of Fuel and Power is starting in a new job following upon a task at the Ministry of Food which he carried out with great success. Everybody wants him to do well at this job. I like him, and when I like people I like them to get on, but I hope he will reconsider the position which he has taken up, because the responsibility lies upon him to see that his methods work, and I am doubtful whether they will work in a city where winter conditions may be very severe. I raise the question now because I do not want to let things wait until a difficult situation has arisen. I want him to act promptly now.

Mr. R. J. Taylor: We hear many complaints about dirty coal and there can only be one main reason for that, and that is that the process of cleaning the coal is not so thorough as it was before the war. If coal is to be thoroughly cleaned when passing over the screens, the work can be most effectively done by men. Boys are employed to a considerable extent, because the screens are a training ground for the boys before they go down the pits, but a boy has not the sense of responsibility that a man has. At nearly all our mines there has been considerable difficulty in the past in finding employment for partial compensation men, men who have had accidents. As the compensation law stands an employer is not compelled to find employment for the man, and, unfortunately, the number of accidents is so great that there have been more injured men than the pits could find light employment for. Will the Minister look into this question and, if he finds that there is a tendency to employ boys for screening and dispense with men, will he take some action? There is a temptation at the present time for mine managers to employ as many boys as they can, because once a boy is working on the surface at a pit he comes under the Essential Work Order and in that way


the manager is in a fair way to getting more labour when the time comes for these boys to pass on into the mine. I am stressing the dismissal of men who have been doing the work, because it is an abominable shame that people should find they are buying stone instead of coal. I remember what happened in the last war, but I do not want to state the case exactly, because the thing was so absolutely disgraceful that it was criminal and I do not want to cast any reflection on the people in the trade; but the only way in which one can be assured of clean coal is by having it screened by men at the surface.

The Minister of Fuel and Power (Major Lloyd George): I do not think that the hon. Member who initiated the discussion need apologise. I do not think anybody could have covered the ground better than he did. Although he confined most of it to Glasgow, he said that his remarks would possibly apply to a good many places outside. I make no complaint whatever about this discussion being initiated, because in questions of this character Parliamentary countries have a very great advantage over non-Parliamentary countries. You can at least direct attention to the things that need to be rectified. I am certain that no Minister objects to having his attention directed so that, if there is something wrong, it can be rectified in time. Therefore I have no complaint whatever. On the contrary I am grateful to the hon. Member that he has brought up this question and for the way in which he put it forward.
The hon. Gentleman referred, as he said he was doing, mostly to Glasgow. He referred to the amount of stocks and to the particular difficulties of the tenement dwellers. He referred-also to the question of quality. May I say a word first about quality? He obviously has appreciated that you cannot expect the same standard of quality in war time as you can in peace time. You do get occasionally a pretty bad consignment. One hears that the percentage of dirt is slightly greater even coming up than it was before. There are difficulties about labour at the screening operations. The point which was raised with regard to boys I will certainly look into, because I think there may be a great deal of substance in what the hon. Member says. It is

important to get efficient labour at the screening. I saw women in Scotland and also in Lancashire doing extremely well at it. It is an important part of the operations. I entirely agreed with the hon. Member when he referred to the effect that this has upon the poorer part of the population. Every ounce of coal they get should theoretically be something they can use. I will do everything I possibly can to see that the quality of the coal is kept as high as possible in the circumstances.
With regard to the amount of stocks, I think I might repeat to the House what I said in the last discussion on this industry. We decided during the summer that it would be advisable to allow stocking to take place within certain definite' prescribed limits by people who could hold a certain amount of coal. The purpose of that was that when the really difficult period came—that is to say, the winter—those who had been able to hold a certain amount of coal would be in a position to look after themselves. Most of the greatly reduced labour and transport available could then be concentrated upon supplying people who have no stocking facilities, such as those of whom the hon. Gentleman spoke. The scheme has already been started gradually, but it comes into full operation on the 28th of this month, when priority will be given to what I might call the small man who has no stocking space and is confined generally speaking to taking small quantities at a time. That scheme will come into full operation on the 28th of this month.
One other point ought to be cleared up. The maximum that can be taken during the two months ending 31st December is 15 cwt. but that does not mean that everyone is taking 15 cwt. There are many people, even in Glasgow, who have already put themselves out of court, shall I say, by obeying the injunction of the Government to stock what they could before. While they hold stock in their cellars they may not acquire any more. Apart from the 15 cwt. limit, the allocation for the City of Glasgow and other cities is fixed according to the number of registrations, though that does not mean that the amount available is equally divided among all. It may well be, and it is in many cases so, that a good deal more than the average can be taken by


some, because the 15 cwt. are not taken by the whole population. As to the position in Glasgow, let me first of all say that we are all aware of the fact that less domestic coal is available now than last year. That is the background of all our Debates upon our industry. Part of our effort was to get more production, more industrial and domestic economy. There is less available, but I will say this about Glasgow. It is getting more coal now than it had last year. While we did make a cut which was possibly severe, we have rectified it, and the weekly allowance to Glasgow is now 1.25 cwt. per week each for the registered population. A good many of the people who have registered will not be taking any at all, because they already have as much as they are entitled to under the Order. I am assuming that registration in Glasgow is very good, as I believe it is. As to the stocks in Glasgow, I am sure the House will forgive me here, because I do not want to give figures, for the very obvious reason. I can say, however, that the average stocks held in Scotland are slightly greater than the average for the whole of Britain and that the average for Glasgow is exactly the same as for the rest of Scotland.
The hon. Member referred to two or three cases where people have not had coal at all for six or seven weeks. He was good enough to say that when the matter was brought to the attention of my Ministry it was handled very quickly. I am grateful for that tribute. He asked how many people there were who could go to their Member of Parliament, and I would like to ask him how many people who do so went to their Local Fuel Overseer before they went to their Members of Parliament. We have a machine, and people should go first to the merchant and try it on him. If he fails, he should go to the Fuel Overseer, who is my officer, in every area.

Mr. Buchanan: The woman who first came to me was a widow. She had a family of four, and she is over 60 years of age. She came to my door instead of joining the queue to see the Fuel Overseer. I thought she was wise in doing so and had taken the softest road.

Major Lloyd George: I could not agree with the hon. Member in that last observation. Judging from the amount of work

he does in this House on behalf of his constituents, I should have thought he would have the biggest queue in all Glasgow. There must be somebody to go to. We have the Fuel Overseer. It is obvious that every individual cannot have attention, but a good many people do not realise that they can go to the Fuel Overseer, and they do not know how they can go about it. Members of Parliament are very useful, but there is this machine. I would like to make it public that I hope that when there are complaints people will use the machine which has been created for that purpose. I was very disturbed to hear that that has happened for so long, and I am glad that it has been put right. Obviously something had gone wrong there. For the hon. Gentleman's information, let me say that I am sending one of my officers down to Glasgow to-night to see whether anything needs looking into. I hope, as a result of his visit, that any difficulties will be put right.

Mr. Stephen: Before the right hon. and gallant Gentleman leaves that point, may I mention the case of a person who went to the Local Fuel Officer, who showed a list and said, "We have a waiting list here of people who have not been able to get coal supplies, and we cannot do anything. What are we to do?"

Major Lloyd George: If he said that, he does not really know what the position is. I have just pointed out that the allocation of coal arriving in Glasgow to-day is equivalent to 1.25 cwt. per week per registration. There must be some mistake.

Mr. Stephen: Let me be quite frank. That case occurred in the London area a good many months ago. As the result of a Debate in this House the person wrote to me about it.

Major Lloyd George: I think the hon. Member realises that we have covered a lot of ground since a good many months ago, especially in Scotland. No doubt there were special circumstances at that time in London which were out of my control. I do not think the hon. Member will find it so to-day. The allocation to Glasgow is sufficient.
With regard to the question of tenements, there is, I believe, a practice of allowing a certain amount of extra money


above a certain floor, and the money goes to the man who carries the coal. I am not sure of the actual position, but I believe a charge is allowed of a little extra above the fifth floor for the man who carries the coal. That is one of our big difficulties in many towns. Even in peace-time we have our difficulties over these things. One could then always blame the coal merchant. Now I can be blamed. That is the slight change that has taken place since. We have got this difficulty, which my hon. Friend probably appreciates, that the coal distributing trade, like all others, has had to make its contribution to the war effort, and during the last 12 months it has lost 12½ per cent. of its personnel. Lorries are not getting any younger, and there is the need to economise in petrol and rubber, but we are doing all we can to get concentration so that there shall be the most economic deliveries. I am in consultation with my right hon. Friend on the question.
With regard to the price of coal, I have not had time to make inquiries on the question my hon. Friend raised. There has been no rise in Glasgow since September. It may be that a change from one to another quality owing to a temporary shortage is the reason. I am making fuller inquiries and will let him know. Nobody is more anxious than I am to see that we get through this winter, as I said a few weeks ago, with as little inconvenience as possible to our people. The position is that the distribution of our stocks of coal this year is better than it was last year. It is far better distributed throughout the country, and there is no doubt at all that the economies that have been made have very greatly helped the situation up to date. As regards the economies of electricity and gas, we expected a very much greater increase because of munition works and so forth. I will not put the position any higher than this: I am not dissatisfied, shall I say, with the progress that has been made.
People say, "Will there be enough coal to see us through this winter?" I will say this, although I may be taking a great risk in saying it, that provided everyone continues to practise the economies they have practised in the last few months, I can say emphatically "Yes." Assuming there is no major catastrophe and we get our effort in production as well and economy continues,

my answer is "Yes." But I would like to make this point very clear: There will be occasional difficulties. There is no machine, I suggest there is no Minister on earth, who can, prevent certain dislocations taking place during winter months. There may be very heavy weather in certain parts of the country which will dislocate transport completely. That is the sort of thing we have to try to meet. But provided economies continue and people realise that they must continue, I think we can get through this winter. The peak demand is in February and March, and possibly part of January.
People may be pleased with economies they have made in the last few weeks, but I must say, while grateful for the efforts they have made, that winter does not start until next Monday. Someone said to me that we are having a very mild winter. I said, "It does not start until next Monday." The period where the peak has always been is the period that lies ahead of us. I am not allowed to discuss the weather, but I have seen in my daily paper that the weather in the Straits of Dover has been very mild for the past week. I wish to give this warning once again: While I know that very great efforts are being made by people in every section of this country to see us through the difficulties, we have not yet started the winter. This is the warning I want to give, but I am perfectly satisfied that if people continue to play the part they have started to play since this Ministry was brought into being, I am confident we shall get through. I shall do everything I possibly can to remove difficulties that may arise from time to time, and I shall never complain if Members bring these things to my notice.

FISH ZONING SCHEME

Mr. Henderson Stewart: I would like to turn the attention of the House to another question, dealing with the distribution of fish. On 9th December, a week last Wednesday, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food said, in reply to a Question of mine on the fish zoning scheme, that he would welcome an opportunity, if the House so desired, to make, a statement on the sub-jest. There was very little doubt at that time, and after yesterday's barrage of Questions there can be no doubt at all, that the House does desire such a state-


ment. I wish to afford my hon. Friend the desired opportunity before we rise for the Christmas Recess.
If I judge the feeling of the House correctly, the fuller the statement he makes the better. What we want to know is not only the purpose and plan of this fish zoning scheme, though there is great need for information on both these points; but equally in what respects and to what extent the scheme has failed, what measures have been taken to meet the faults, and what further measures are contemplated. My hon. Friend has already admitted in the House on several occasions that miscalculations and mistakes have been made in the case of supplies of fish allocated to Southampton, Bristol, Shrewsbury and a good many other places. He must know that these are but a fraction of the complaints reaching hon. Members from all parts of the country at the present time. Therefore I hope he will not, and I am sure he will not, attempt to burke the issue but will face the facts squarely, even though they reflect upon his own Department. For let him be assured, what applies to the sinner who repenteth will apply equally to him. The House respects a Minister who admits a mistake but has very little patience with one who tries to bluff it off. I do not think he will attempt to do that. In this case the errors are too numerous, as has been proved by Questions in the House, and they affect too seriously the millions of consumers we are here representing to be ignored. I hope too that my hon. Friend will not make over-much of the cases where selected communities are better off now under this scheme than they were before. We all know of places which have been allocated more fish to-day than previously. It has been said in the House, and I have heard that used as an argument to support the scheme. [Interruption.] One hon. Member thinks that a good argument. It is said by those people that this place X being better off than before, this is a fair scheme. Surely that is a most fallacious argument. The fact that a few places are better supplied than before—and some of them are infinitely better off and are getting more fish than ever before; I am giving the House information that reaches us—means that the distribution is unequal, and that other places do suffer.
Indeed it is with this feature of the scheme—its patent inequality as it affects consumers—that the House is most seriously concerned. We all recognise the importance of economising inland transport. That is one of the most urgent and anxious of all the domestic problems facing the country to-day and nobody would do anything to prevent its solution. On the contrary, many of us think that the Government might go a great deal further in restricting unnecessary travel and transportation than they are now doing. But I think I have the House with me when I say that the condition precedent of Parliamentary and public support for all such economies is that the hardships that follow shall fall fairly upon all citizens.
The rationing of food has been accepted almost without a murmur. Why? Because everybody is treated alike. In that case, the consumers have first consideration and have been given a fair and square deal, in a carefully-worked out policy. I constantly ask myself why, after that experience, the Minister of Food appears to display so little concern for the interests of the general public in other schemes for which he is responsible. Why, for example, does he allow the present milk zoning plan to operate, when he must know the cruel inequalities and the frequent absurdities of the scheme as it applies to humble families, frequently with young children, in cities like Dundee? Why, again, despite overwhelming evidence, does the Minister of Food insist upon imposing harsh and unjustifiable sacrifices upon some communities, while others—the majority, I believe—enjoy much easier conditions, in the retail deliveries scheme? Why, in these cases, does he tell me, as he did in the latter instance, that local town councils, which in Scotland are the traditional, and indeed the only, representatives of consumers in matters of this kind, have no standing in the matter, and are therefore denied the right to help their people?
Why, in this fish zoning scheme, has he paid so little attention to the needs of the already distracted housewife? Does he think it right to confine his negotiations to the trade, and to ignore the public and the local authorities who represent them? Does he think that because only a few town councils and other authorities have


risen up to seek justice for their people, he can go on imposing these inequalities without limit? I cannot speak for England, but I warn the Minister of Food that if he maintains his present stubborn attitude on this matter, he is running right into trouble in Scotland; and I am sure my hon. Friends who represent Scottish constituencies will support me on that point. Our people in Scotland, and it is my duty to speak for some of them, are willing to draw in their belts to the last hole, and beyond, for the national cause: they do not need to be lectured on patriotism. But they must be allowed to judge of the cause and the occasion; they must be convinced that the particular sacrifices they are asked to bear arise out of sound and well-considered schemes; above all, they must be satisfied that all shall bear them equally.
The fish zoning scheme satisfies none of these conditions. I am not speaking for the trade to-day; I am speaking for the consumer. It is the public principally who suffer from this scheme, and they have never been properly consulted about it. The House has never had a chance to examine it, with all the facts set out. My hon. Friend is prepared to make a statement to-day; it is a pity that that statement was not made two months ago.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food (Mr. Mabane): The House had an opportunity to devote a whole day to such a Debate, and nobody chose to speak upon it.

Mr. Stewart: My hon. Friend is unfair to the House. It is impossible to argue about something of which we do not know the details. It is impossible to discuss a scheme until we have seen it working. We were led to believe that here was a perfect scheme. It has turned out differently. The scheme is already demonstrably ill-considered, and it may turn out to be unsound. That is not surprising; it would be a miracle were it otherwise. We are dealing here with perhaps the most complex and delicately-organised industry in the country, an industry concerned with the most perishable of all foodstuffs, an industry based primarily on the initiative of thousands of small men, from whom no national statistics can normally be provided, from whom you cannot normally get the range of facts that we get from other trades.

Surely in such circumstances this was the very last industry upon which to impose a revolutionary change in the system of distribution without the most careful examination and consideration. I am making no criticism of Mr. Adamson and his staff—he has won the admiration of all who come into contact with him—when I call this scheme ill-considered, but I ask why it was launched with such defective examination beforehand. There are in this House men to whom my hon. Friend could have turned for advice. There is the Minister of Supply, who was commissioned by the Government to undertake a great inquiry into the trade, and whose report on the subject is still the first document of its kind in our possession. There is the hon. Member for Cathcart, who served on this Commission. And there is the hon. Member for Streatham who has an almost unrivalled knowledge of the trade. Were these experts consulted? If not, why not? I am satisfied that if they had been consulted, the mistakes which are admitted by hon. Friends in all parts of the country would not have taken place. This scheme fails in its second condition in that it was launched upon the country without proper consideration. And lastly, it fails because its effect falls with glaring inequality upon consumers in different parts of the country. It is for these reasons, I am sure, that the House has shown so much persistent criticism in recent days. I invite my hon. Friend to answer that criticism now. He is too skilled a politician to ignore the public will.

Mr. Robertson: I am sure that the House is indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for East Fife (Mr. Henderson Stewart) for initiating this Debate. It must be obvious to all hon. Members, as it is to the whole country, that this scheme is not succeeding in the way that its promoters hoped and that many complaints have been received. There are, however, fundamental difficulties in regard to this scheme or any other scheme. The first difficulty is that there is only a quarter of the pre-war catch. Trawlers that were available to catch fish before the war are now doing more important work in mine sweeping and fighting the enemy on the seas, wherever he can be found. In addition to that there is an infinitely greater demand than existed before the war.


There is only a quarter of the supply, and a demand 10 or 20 times greater. It is difficult for any scheme to overcome these facts. The next difficulty is that the entire pre-war chain of distribution still exists. It is a very natural thing for that to happen. It would be very unnatural for a fish salesman, a coastal merchant, inland merchant, or a fishmonger or fish fryer, voluntarily to close down his business before he is compelled to do so. There is not enough fish to go round all these people, but the Ministry have made a praiseworthy attempt to make it go round, and, in my opinion, it is impossible to satisfy everyone or to give everyone an equal share.
Another difficulty is that nowadays, again because of the war situation, the industry is mainly concentrated on the West coast whereas in the days of peace it was mainly concentrated on the Humber. The Humber represented more than half of the entire production of the fish industry and now the Humber is almost without fish and the only East coast port of any importance is Aberdeen. The industry is concentrated at Fleet-wood mainly, and Milford Haven secondly. Zoning is overdue. It is absolutely essential to save transport and to improve distribution. The scheme eliminates long distance hauls, and the taking of fish from Aberdeen to Southampton or Portsmouth, which was quite usual before zoning was introduced, is no longer possible. Instead of that, ports, and retailers and wholesalers are definitely allocated to the various zones with the exception of London. A London merchant or retailer is entitled to buy fish from wholesalers at any port within the limit of his allocation. All purchases of fish, either by wholesale or retail, have had an allocation based on purchases which they made during the datum period of three months in 1041. In some fashion the resulting figures have been married to populations on a per capita basis. Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary will explain how this is done. The scheme has many weaknesses. What it does not provide is an equal share for all consumers. It is left to the retailer and I am satisfied that the majority of retailers are generally doing their best to see that everyone of their customers gets a fair crack of the whip. Their task is a difficult one too.
The trade, in my view, are not justified in opposing the scheme. I was employed in the industry for many years. I regard it with very great affection, and if I thought that it had a good case I would fight with the trade to the last ditch. I have gone into this thing very fully. I have met representatives here and listened attentively to their genuine complaints, all of which can be put right without wrecking the scheme, but for three-and-a-quarter years, during which period the fish trade have not attempted to put forward any scheme which might be acceptable to the Ministry, they have enjoyed a freedom which no other food trade or any other trade has enjoyed. They have enjoyed profits out of all comparison with those they enjoyed in pre-war times. With one-quarter of the supply they have been able to make a profit sufficient to cover their expenses and leave something over. I understand that the recent investigation of retailers' books carried out over a large area of the country indicated that with one-third of the weight and quantity of the pre-war trade, the net profits were three times those of pre-war. So the trade cannot come to us now and say, "We have had a bad deal." They have had a very good deal economically, but the consumers have had a thoroughly bad deal. For that reason this scheme or some other scheme must be introduced.
I want to say some quite blunt words to my friends in the industry. I feel that the Fish Industry Joint Council, which they set up under the chairmanship of an eminent lawyer, have fought a successful delaying action with the Ministry of Food for the past 18 months, but that has to come to an end. They cannot carry that any further by coming to this House and asking for our support. If any substantial proportion of the trade continue to obstruct this scheme, the Ministry of Food can do without them.

Mr. Lipson: Can the hon. Gentleman say what form this obstruction takes? We hear a great many charges of sabotage and of obstruction against the trade. Can he give definite facts to show how they have been obstructing or what form the obstruction takes?
Mr. Robertson: It is not for me to give those facts. Possibly if the hon. Gentleman appeals to the Paliamentary Secretary


he may give him some evidence of it. I have stated that for 18 months the Fish Industry Joint Council have successfully fought a delaying action against the scheme. They have already had every opportunity to put up a scheme of their own, and even now it must be apparent to hon. Members from their mail, attempts are still being made to obstruct this scheme.

Mr. Lipson: Mr. Lipson indicated dissent.

Mr. Robertson: With good will the inequalities and difficulties that have arisen can be put right. I earnestly hope that my friends in the industry will throw in their lot with the Minister and the Department and do all they can to work this very difficult scheme. I would go further and say, "Well, if you do not work it, the Ministry have at hand a ready-made machine in the inland markets and the wholesale meat depots and retail butchers, none of which are fully employed, and all of which would welcome some additional turnover to meet additional expense. They could undertake this job with only a fifth of the pre-war supply and give the public at least as good a distribution as they get to-day." I hope it will not come to that. That will entirely depend on the Minister and the good will of the trade, which I feel certain will be forthcoming.
There is another difficulty and a very serious one, namely, the attitude adopted by the Icelandic trawler owners. They have enjoyed an El Dorado at our expense since the war broke out. They have taken millions of pounds out of this country and have given us much needed fish in exchange and I do not complain. I think it is a reasonable turn of fortune's wheel that they should benefit from the fish caught near their own doors because our vessels in the past have reaped harvests for years by fishing in waters adjacent to Iceland. These trawlers gave us one half of the total catch we have enjoyed. Because of the concentration of war industry in the Bristol Channel, Merseyside and the Clyde areas and the tremendous increase in inland transportation it was essential that the Ministry of War Transport should ask these owners that instead of making all their voyages to Fleetwood they should make one to Fleetwood, one to Grimsby and one to Hull. That was a very reasonable request because the railways of the west

coast have not been designed for this transport to the same extent as east coast railways, and the Humber has the proper plants and skilled staffs standing idle. I regard it as a national necessity that the trade or some part of it should be taken from the severely harassed west coast.
The Icelandic owners refused to do so and tied up their boats. A few moments ago I was asked whether I had any evidence of sabotage. I cannot give any definite evidence, but I have it reported to me that Icelandic trawler agents in Fleetwood have sent cablegrams recently to the Icelandic owners telling them to continue to tie up their boats, and that if they do so they will win, with the result that they will be able to go back and land fish at Fleetwood. If that is true—and I have it on what I regard as very good authority—then it is a most wrongful act by those men. It is an act which, I believe, could be punished and which, I hope, will be punished because no British national is expected at this time to encourage food producers, when our people are hungry, to say, "We shall sit where we are and we shall win the day." We shall be forced to add to the congestion on Merseyside and the railways there by agreeing to the unreasonable demands of these trawler owners and fishermen in Iceland, who can only afford to lay up their boats because of the generosity of this country during the last few years. After all, they only fish by the grace and protection of the British Navy and I hope the Ministry of Food will stand fast and resist these demands. I hope, too, that the country and hon. Members will stand behind the Ministry. If we can do without this food in mid-winter we can do without it for all time. If the Icelandic owners will see reason and accept the very reasonable demands of the Ministry of War Transport and work with a good will they will continue to enjoy the friendship of this country and the market which we have so generously given.

Mr. Evelyn Walkden: I am sure the hon. Gentleman the Member for Streatham (Mr. Robertson) must be a very happy man indeed and must feel as grateful as I do at the opportunity which has been provided us to-day by the hon. Member for East Fife (Mr. Stewart) for having this Debate. I have no doubt that when the Parliamentary Secretary


comes to reply he will, as we say in the industrial north, "put his cards on the table, face upwards." The hon. Gentleman the Member for Cheltenham (Mr. Lipson) asked for evidence of sabotage. Well, let us be quite frank about it, there are saboteurs. The propaganda has attempted to sabotage this scheme from the beginning. When I first came into the House, it was some weeks before I made my maiden speech, and in that speech I referred to fish supplies in connection with hotels and restaurants. Everybody knows that hotels and restaurants found that fish was the most profitable commodity they could offer to their customers. The Minister of Food knew that he would have to tackle that problem sooner or later, but it took months and months for him to pluck up the courage to organise a scheme. The trade refused to help him. The hon. Member for Streatham knows that there is no greater body of social anarchists in this country than the federation which has been directing this propaganda against the Minister of Food. For nearly 18 months they have refused to co-operate. They were happy to draw extra sums of money, through back-door methods, for fish that was controlled, from hotels and restaurants, and they were quite content to see the mass of the consumers go short of fish.

Mr. Boothby: Will the hon. Member make it plain that his remarks apply to white fish and not to herring?

Mr. Walkden: Where fish has been in supply, the only fish in generous supply has been herring, and I am glad to say that they have had to eat herring at the Ritz this last week.

Mr. Lipson: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the consumers are getting much less fish now than they got this time last year?

Mr. Walkden: If I am allowed to do my own batting, I shall get along all right. I assure the House that the consumers in many areas are receiving much more fish at the present time than they have received during the past two years.

Mr. Lipson: In what areas?

Mr. Walken: I have visited several industrial canteens during the last few days, and the caterers have said to me, "One thing about this fish scheme is that we shall be able to get some fish; in fact, we have got fish already." The industrial workers in my Division are having fish on their menu for the first time for a long while. At whose expense? At the expense of some of those people who have plenty of time on their hands and who can afford meals in the hotels where at the moment the Minister of Food has decided that the controlled amount shall be two pounds for 50 main meals. In another area that I visited last week, I found that for the first time certain hospitals where there have been great difficulties in obtaining supplies of fish have been able to get fish for the patients because of the redistribution under the zoning scheme. The next example I want to give is of an Army camp. At the camp which I visited, the quartermaster said, "I have 20 stone of fish this week, and I am grateful for that supply. I do not know much about Parliament or zoning schemes, but I know this means fish for our breakfasts, and we are grateful to the Minister of Food for generous supplies."
I suggested to the hon. Gentleman a few days ago that he had had a bad Press and that he had not told the people the naked truth. If they had not been told before, the hon. Member for Streatham has told them to-day. Everyone knows what the shortage means. Everyone knows who has been getting the fish. It has been in the shops, but it has not been sold from the front of the shop. It has been sold from the back doors on many occasions. But we congratulate the Food Minister, and I am exceedingly happy that he has taken his, courage in both hands and challenged these social anarchists for endeavouring to sabotage the scheme, I hope he will take note of the words of congratulation and of some of the complaints that have been uttered in this Debate and go through them with a fine tooth comb, because there is a considerable amount of misrepresentation on the subject. I am exceedingly happy to know that in one fish shop, at least, in an area which I visited last week-end, there has been at least 20 per cent. more fish in the last fortnight than they have been able to get on the average in the last four months.
I would appeal to the Minister on one important issue. In many little villages in the industrial North, mining villages in particular, we have not any British Restaurants nor hotels. We have not any of those places where you can buy even a 5s. meal. The only place we can visit, when we want a little extra to our ration, is the fried fish shop. I do not mind confessing that I have been in the queue within the last fortnight, and I have discussed the fish fryers' problem with them, and I have tried to make representations to the hon. Gentleman and his Noble Friend that, just as he has encouraged them by allowing them extra cooking oil and suggesting that they should use more potatoes, he should see to it that they get extra supplies of fish, particularly in those, areas. These British Restaurants are very costly to the local authorities. Many of them cost up to £1,000, and the local authorities do not like spending such a lot of money. The only people who can supply us with meals in the evening are the fish fryers.
I, therefore, appeal to the hon. Gentleman to ask his Noble Friend to review the difficult problem and the difficult position of the fish fryers and the important contribution they are making in the war effort. In one area that I have in mind the fish fryers are actually providing more suppers for munition workers than the canteens or the British Restaurants. If you have to take into account the needs of hotels and restaurants, and the kind of criticism that is being churned out from the various propaganda factories, represented by the Fishmongers Federation, will you take into account the whole question of feeding our people on an equal footing and seeing to it that we get improved supplies? That is not criticism of the zoning scheme. There may be difficulties, but 99 per cent. of the scheme is sound. It can be adjusted, and it can be subjected to reallocations in certain neighbourhoods. The Noble Lord, Lord Woolton, has courage, and he should take his courage in both hands and respond to representations made for reasonable amendments, but there is one thing he must never do. He must never give way to those false doctrines set out lay persons of social anarchist mentality who are concerned because of vested interests to destroy the scheme.

Mr. Arthur Duckworth: The Minister, I am sure, will be grateful for the support he has received from the hon. Member who has just addressed the House. I take a rather more moderate view. I can find no evidence that leads me to take such an optimistic view of the situation with regard to the fish zoning scheme. I agree with the hon. Member that this House should give no encouragement to any section of the trade or to any interests who are attempting to sabotage the scheme as a whole. It may be true that there are some interested parties who wish to see the scheme completely broken up and withdrawn, but I am convinced that that is not true of the trade as a whole. I should like to make it perfectly plain that so far as the trade interests, for whom I speak in my constituency, are concerned, they make no demand of that kind. They accept the fact that there must be some degree of curtailment of their business. But this scheme has now been running two months. That surely is a reasonable time in which we might expect initial difficulties and dislocations to be smoothed out and overcome. Yet, whatever has been said so far by the Minister in reply to Parliamentary Questions, the fact remains that the scheme as a whole is not yet working satisfactorily.
It is evident that retail traders in particular still have legitimate grievances which in spite of assurances given up to date have not been met. My hon. Friend the Member for East Fife (Mr. Henderson Stewart) put the case of the consuming public with great fairness, and I do not wish to add anything to what he has said. So far as my constituents are concerned, I do not claim that the total supplies are inadequate or that they are deficient in quality. I think my constituency is receiving a fair share of the total fish available. What I do ask is that in the matter of allocation of supplies there should be some measure of justice as between one retail trader and another. I have irrefutable evidence, although I do not wish to occupy time by producing it, that up to date the scheme has given rise to very great inequalities and injustice. So far, in spite of the protests made to the fish distribution officer, no steps have been taken to rectify the situation. The facts really are not in dispute. The Minister has admitted the situation that exists when replying to Questions. It has been


laid down that supplies each week should be proportionate to the quantities received during the datum period. The volume of trade done during these months is well known. During the two months that this scheme has been in operation the volume of trade which has been done between the various retail traders has led to a complete unbalance of the total of the whole fish trade. The amount of business they have done has been dictated by the disproportionate quantities they have received. There is one firm with widespread ramifications which has constantly received supplies in excess of the quantities received by other traders. I ask that the Minister should not be merely content, as he has been up to date, to repeat the general defence that he has made of the scheme. We should all, I think, be prepared to support the scheme as a whole, but we do ask that he will insist on the machinery of the scheme being carefully reviewed and insist, if necessary, upon substantial modifications being introduced to meet the fair criticisms that have been made and the legitimate grievances that undoubtedly exist in the retail trade.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food (Mr. Mabane): I am glad to have this opportunity of saying something about the fish zoning scheme. The hon. Member for East Fife (Mr. Henderson Stewart) urged that I should not burke the issue. He asked me to face facts squarely. I can ask nothing better than that the House of Commons should be prepared to face the facts squarely on-this issue. It has been very evident in this short Debate that the House is satisfied that this scheme is worth supporting. It is anxious that the scheme should be made perfect as rapidly as possible, and I can say in general terms that that is the desire of the Minister of Food. At the outset I want to remind the House that since the outbreak of the war fish has been continuously, is still, and is likely to continue in short supply. The reasons are well known. Many fishing boats are engaged in fishing for more dangerous catches provided for them by the enemy. The fishing grounds to the East of this island are no longer so accessible. The man power of the fishing fleet is to no small degree engaged in more urgent tasks in the Royal Navy and the Merchant Marine. If the

House or the country expects the Minister of Food to provide by any scheme that all shall have as much fish as they would like or even a considerable proportion of what they would like, they are bound to be disappointed. What is more, I must give the warning that the lack of man-power and shipping is likely to be such that the future prospects for the fish supply will be not better but worse.
I want to relate some history, particularly in view of something said by my hon. Friend the Member for East Fife, who, I think, in certain respects overstated his case. Fish has been one of the most difficult problems before the Ministry since the war began. My right hon. Friend the Postmaster-General and my right hon. and gallant Friend the Minister of Fuel and Power will bear that out. I am certain that fish is engraven on their memories. For some time it was subject to no control as to price or distribution. No more fish was landed then than now. In general the result was that fish went in excessive quantities to those who were best able to pay. The House rightly pressed for price control. Price control of fish is far more difficult than price control of many other commodities. A system of price control was devised and instituted. It worked reasonably well, but it did not secure equal distribution. Fish was distributed not according to need, but—and of this I suppose I ought to make no complaint—according to the best advantage of the seller. My Department endeavoured to secure more equal distribution of supplies by equalising the freight charges, so that it was no longer an advantage for the coastal merchant to send fish to the nearest point, but it was evident that the very nature of the scheme meant that certain parts of the country were inadequately supplied, and that there could be no defence to the charge that fish was not being distributed in accordance with the weight of population. Further, there were loopholes for the very limited number of people who desired to engage in malpractices.
It appeared to my Noble Friend that in these circumstances it was his duty to effect, so far as possible, an equitable distribution of the limited supplies available, and with that object in view the Department some long time ago was con-


sidering schemes for securing this equal distribution—surely, the House will agree, a laudable objective. But while those plans were being considered, another and urgent and vital problem came along from the Ministry of War Transport. The burden upon inland transport, to which my hon. Friend referred, was so great that economy was necessary. Fish was making some fantastic journeys. Those journeys were to an extent the result of the maintenance of pre-war practices in distribution, and were to an extent also the result of what an hon. Member behind me referred to, the fact that the landings had been transferred from the East Coast over to the West, so that a port which had been relatively unimportant reached the position when it was landing getting on for half the fish of the country.
Transport had to be saved. Let me emphasise with all the power I can that the Ministry of Food has not devised this scheme to provide an interesting exercise for overworked officials but in order to make a loyal response to the urgent demands of the Ministry of War Transport which it felt it was its duty to make. To meet this need the zoning scheme was devised. The purpose is to limit the transport used in the distribution of fish by confining its journeys to geographical zones in which the population is roughly proportionate to the average landings at the ports. The scheme was discussed in its earlier stages with representatives of the trade. There was no violent reaction. Finally, it was presented to the trade and then there was a violent reaction. The trade declared its ability and willingness to prepare a scheme which was more convenient to itself and would save no less transport. It was given an opportunity to do so. The scheme was submitted to the Ministry of Transport, and the reply was that it did not in the least secure the necessary economy. The trade asked for another hearing. It was given another hearing. On 14th August a meeting was held and the scheme was again fully examined, and the Ministry of War Transport reluctantly had to come to the conclusion that it by no means did the job. I say "reluctantly," for clearly we would much rather have had a scheme that would at one and the same time have produced the economy in transportation and would have been worked by the trade itself.
In default, the zoning scheme produced by the Department had to go forward. I perhaps ought to sketch very generally some of the principles of the scheme. Fish landed at the ports is allocated to coastal wholesalers at the ports by allocation committees. The allocations are based on the quantities of fish handled by each wholesaler during the datum period. The coastal wholesalers have the duty of despatching the fish in pre-determined proportions to their customers. Those customers may be inland wholesalers, fishmongers, or friers, and to a small degree hospitals, institutions and catering establishments. The customers' lists were compiled with reference to the recorded sales of fish to these customers by the coastal wholesalers during the datum period. Then the inland merchants had the duty of despatching the fish to their customers, again with reference to sales during the datum period.
Now the compilation of lists, and of accurate lists, was a task of the greatest possible magnitude, and it was not made easier by the fact that, as is generally admitted, the fish trade has not in the past been over much given to the keeping of books and records. It was inevitable that there should be mistakes, but evidently those mistakes could be revealed only in practice. It was clear that the greatest amount of good will and co-operation would be necessary to rectify those mistakes as quickly as possible. There was good machinery to rectify them. We wanted good will and good machinery and there was the good machinery. At the ports there were distribution committees composed of the trade, with an independent chairman, to hear complaints. At the inland markets there were distribution committees with independent chairmen to hear complaints. The Ministry have their own area fish officers charged with the duty of adjusting difficulties in those parts of his area which do not come under the inland distribution committee.
I must make it plain, and this is very important in view of what the hon. Gentleman below the Gangway said, that the basis of distribution was not solely the performance during the datum period. The hon. Gentleman complained that some parts of the country were getting more fish than they were getting a year ago and he asked for equality. It was


necessary that that should be so if there was to be equality.

Mr. Henderson Stewart: How is that?

Mr. Mabane: Let me go on and I will show why. If distribution had been oh the basis of previous performance, the result would have been, that deficiencies in various parts of the country would have been perpetuated. Therefore, an adjustment was made to provide those areas which had been seriously under-supplied in relation to their population with a higher and more equitable proportion, at the expense of areas that, having regard to the limited supply, had been proportionately over-supplied. I am confident that the House will approve of that purpose. It seems strange to me to hear the hon. Gentleman below the Gangway arguing on the one hand for equality of distribution and on the other hand complaining of the very measures taken by the Department to secure that equality of distribution. [An HON. MEMBER: "It is not equal now."] It is far more equal than it ever has been.
In a matter of this kind, when vitally necessary supplies are at stake, the Department and the country are entitled to ask not only for an adequate trial of the scheme, but for a trial in which everybody is determined to do his best for success. I ask the House to consider whether such a trial has been given. The trade predicted failure before the scheme was introduced. Within a few weeks, resolutions were being passed announcing failure. I myself, at Question Time in his House, did my best, as I hope I always do, to give accurate replies, yet from time to time even the accuracy of my replies was challenged outside. We admitted that there were mistakes, but emphasis was laid on the mistakes. The hon. Member said that it was a good thing for a Department to say when it was wrong. We said that there had been a mistake here in Portsmouth, there in Southampton and there in Norwich, and we at once set about rectifying those mistakes. It would have been better if not so much emphasis had been placed outside upon those mistakes.
There are certain unchallengeable facts. It is a fact that the fish landed since the zoning scheme began was greater in quantity, indeed considerably greater,

than in the same period last year. That is an unchallengeable fact, but it is due to no merit in my Department. It is an accident but it is a fact, and I cannot say that it will continue. I do not think it will. The period of storms is upon us. December may be very bad. For example, this morning we got only one, or at the most two, boats to port, and there were only about 170 tons of fish for the whole country, whereas yesterday 206 tons went to Billingsgate alone. That equally is not the fault of my Department. I do ask, Would it not have been better for the trade and those concerned to face the difficulties squarely in order to make the best effort to overcome them? As I said from the start, there are difficulties and imperfections. I know most of them and I want to indicate some of them to the House.
Before I do so, let me say that there can be no doubt that the results, so far as the first and major object of the scheme is concerned, are undoubtedly satisfactory, and I am wholly justified in saying so. The economy in transport has been such as to draw a letter from the Ministry of War Transport, from which perhaps I may quote these words:
The scheme has already effected substantial economies in transport, and from the transport point of view has certainly been well worth while. From the inception of the scheme up to the 14th November about 6,000 train miles a week have been saved and the indications are that this figure will increase. This means that locomotives and their crews which are sorely needed at the present time have been made available for other urgent traffic.
More fish has been distributed and at so much less cost in transport. That is on the transport side.
The difficulties and unsatisfactory features have been of a different character. I was going to deal at some length with the Icelandic boats to which the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr. Robertson) has referred. Much has been said about the damage to supplies owing to the folly, it is said, of the direction given by the Ministry of War Transport to certain boats to land their catches at Eastern ports. It was not at first made plain—these were not boats flying the British flag—I am sorry to have to refer to this matter, because the House will appreciate that certain elements of security are involved, but as public reference has been made to the matter it is only fair that I


should say something. To ease transport and equalise landings, Icelandic boats were asked to land their catches twice out of three times on the East coast. The additional journey is not very much greater; there is some additional element of danger, but not much. The Icelandic fishermen have done well out of this country. We asked for this return. The Icelandic authorities agreed to this course, but nevertheless the boats were laid up, and the owners did not comply. They laid up, incidentally, at a time when fishing in any case is very restricted. We have not given way to the Icelandic owners. I am informed by cable that the crews are ready to sail. I was delighted to hear hon Members say they would support the Minister in not giving way to the owners.
There are complaints of quality. In peace-time fishermen catch the fish in demand, but in war-time for perfectly proper and understandable reasons all is fish that comes to the net, and consequently there is a much smaller proportion of prime fish. It was clearly desirable, with this difference in quality, that wholesalers should distribute their fish in such a way that their customers got a reasonable allocation of all kinds. They are not bound by law to do so. Allocations are by weight and undoubtedly some have been getting an undue proportion of prime fish and others of inferior fish. The best and easiest way to overcome this is by spontaneous action by the wholesale distributors themselves. To make a Regulation requiring this even distribution by quality, as the House will see, would involve enormous administrative difficulties. We want it distributed in this fair way and we are watching it very closely.

Mr. Robertson: Is there not one inherent weakness in the scheme, in that the coastal wholesaler gets so much more for supplying his retail customer and so much less for supplying his inland wholesale customer that he studies his more profitable customer by giving him the best varieties and gives the unfortunate inland wholesaler far too great a proportion of inferior or unwanted kinds? One unfortunate wholesaler in London recently got 100 boxes of nurses which have never been used for food in my lifetime but for bait. The wholesaler did not want the nurses any more than the supplier's direct retail customers. He has to sell to re-

tailers who require saleable fish just as the retailers buying direct. I do feel this is an inherent weakness in the scheme and I hope my hon. Friend will go into it.

Mr. Mabane: My hon. Friend speaks with expert knowledge, and he has certainly touched upon a very important point, which is receiving very careful attention. We shall have to consider what action can be taken if there is not this evenness in distribution. I shall be glad to have the hon. Member's help and advice on the matter. It is also very important that the allocation for a whole week or for a fortnight should not be sent on one day. It should be spaced evenly over the period. There is some evidence of people getting all their fish for one week on one day. That is a difficulty we are watching. It is desirable, and here I think I come to a point raised by the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Mr. Lipson), that when the supplies reach the fishmonger they should be offered openly. Under-the-counter sales are undesirable in every way, yet there is some evidence that the display of a notice "No fish to-day" does not in the least mean that no fish has arrived. It might be desirable to require fishmongers, after having met their hospital and other such entitlements, to display their fish on the slab. The House will understand the difficulty of enforcing such a provision, but I do not think it should be ruled out. The hon. Member for Doncaster (Mr. E. Walkden) referred to supplies which went to hotels and restaurants. An Order has been made restricting those supplies. From that Order we have excluded the fish friers, so they are in an advantageous position. I know the hon. Member's interest in the fish friers, and in the work they are doing.
Let me refer to a special difficulty in the Fleetwood zone, which is at the root of a lot of the complaints made in this House. I have been interested to observe the geographical distribution of the complaints made by hon. Members, and they are mainly from the Fleetwood zone. Some time ago, when fish supplies were diverted, merchants went from the east coast to Fleetwood. They were accommodated in Fleetwood, but an arrangement was made with the Fleetwood merchants whereby these "comers-in," if I may use a Yorkshire term, were required to confine their activities to particular kinds of fish,


mainly Icelandic. The result is that landings at Fleetwood have hot been treated as a whole and allocated to the merchants as a whole, and two buyers in the same town attached to two different wholesalers—I think that constituents of the hon. Member for Shrewsbury (Mr. A. Duckworth) are sufferers—one of them dealing in English white fish and the other dealing in Icelandic white fish, might find their supplies very different if the landings were unequal. I hope that we shall be able to overcome this. Just before I came to the House I received a telegram from Fleetwood, saying:
New allocation lists now being prepared. Will advise you immediately new scheme can be put into operation.
I am sincerely hoping that this major difficulty will be overcome.
Finally, let me say that the Department has admitted to certain miscalculations, which have caused difficulties in some half-dozen towns or cities. These are in process of rectification, and they are not inherent in the scheme. Quite apart from these matters, the Department would not yet claim that the lists upon which allocations are made are in all cases accurate. In so far as they are not accurate, the reason is to be found in the main in the inadequacy of the figures which the Department was able to obtain. It is the duty of the various distribution committees and of our Area Officers to repair any inadequacies. That is being done daily. In some cases the lists do not give satisfaction because during the datum period it appears, certainly in the case of some fish friers, that they were buying through improper channels. I have a letter from the Secretary of the National Federation of Fish Friers frankly stating the fact. Clearly fish so bought cannot now be offered as part of the purchases during the datum period. As the House will realise, that is a difficult problem.
This is a scheme of great magnitude. It covers a trade whose methods in the past have not been so precise as those adopted in other trades. The scheme is in its initial stages; and there have been, and must continue to be, difficulties where the supply never meets the demand.
The hon. Member for Cheltenham asked me yesterday to state the districts in which the scheme was working satisfactorily. I had puzzled over the question, as to what

he meant by districts. So far as transport is concerned, the scheme is working satisfactorily everywhere. So far as distribution is concerned, let me frankly state that I studied his question with care and was unable to satisfy myself as to what he meant by district. If the hon. Member by districts meant zones—and if he did not mean zones, heaven knows what he did mean—I am entitled to say, in general terms, that it is working satisfactorily in the Scottish zone, in the South West zone, and, having regard to the shortage of supplies, in the two Eastern zones; but I cannot say that it is working satisfactorily in the Fleetwood zone. It is untrue to say that trouble even in that zone is general. If he did not mean zones, I do not know what he did mean.
Consider what is here at stake. On the one hand you have a great national interest which must be served if the war is to be won at the earliest moment, and on the other hand the established practice of a trade. That is the conflict of interest which this House must resolve. Is it possible to doubt what the choice must be? It is dangerous to the trade in its own interest to suggest, either directly or by implication, that, if there was no scheme, there would be more fish. It is not true. Have any Members in this House seen many kippers lately or many herring? They are not in the scheme. They are not subject to the zoning scheme, and there is no abundance of this fish because there is a scarcity of that category too.
This is not the only scheme made necessary by the war which upsets old established trade practices. I said a short time ago that the whole of the rationing structure of the Ministry of Food upsets trade practices and could not continue for a day unless the public and the trade were ready to co-operate. Rationing, we are told, gives general satisfaction because the public and the trade are determined to make it work. They make it their own and without that it could not work. Let me give an example of it. Last year the distribution of tomatoes, a somewhat difficult problem, was generally acclaimed a model of distribution. The Department produced a scheme with virtually no Orders behind it at all. The whole of the credit for making that scheme work so smoothly must go to the growers and distributors


who co-operated so loyally and with such a high sense of public duty. With similar co-operation, which I hope we shall now receive, this scheme will work too.
What are the alternatives? The hon. Gentleman the Member for East Fife was, I thought, a little too violent when he said that the scheme must go.

Mr. Henderson Stewart: I did not say that.

Mr. Mabane: I am glad to have that withdrawal from the hon. Member. What are the alternatives? Would the House prefer to go back to the period of no control of prices or distribution with unequal quantities going here and there? I think not. The inland transport position would preclude that. Here is an important foodstuff even if in short supply, and it is the duty of my noble Friend to get it to the public in as equal quantities as he can. The House will require him to do that. What then can we think of? The alternative is not to go back but to go forward by some form of rationing. It is not easy to ration a perishable commodity in any case, but it is much more difficult when it is in short supply. The fundamental principle of rationing is that it must be met, and it fails in Germany because that fact is ignored. If rationing in some form is a solution which the House says should be considered, I do not think the Ministry of Food will be lacking in courage to have a shot at it. But would rationing ease the burden of the trade? I think not. The trade would be far better served if loyal efforts were made now, bearing always in mind the national interest, to make the scheme work in the way in which it was intended. I am deeply grateful for the support the House has given to-day, both by the speeches that have been made and by the way the speeches have been received, to the efforts of the Department to make this scheme in every way a success. The Department is anxious and willing to strain every nerve to make that co-operation effective. Let us hope that that may be so.

SUNDAY ENTERTAINMENTS (SCOTLAND)

Mr. Barr: A variety of subjects have been discussed to-day and I now want to turn the attention of the House for a short time to another subject of great importance, especially to

those of us who represent Scottish constituencies. I refer to the opening of the cinemas on Sundays in many districts in Scotland. At the same time I would also like to refer to the preservation of the weekly day of rest. What was the position in Scotland in regard to the opening of cinemas on Sunday before the recent development? The cinema trade were opposed to Sunday opening. The Scottish Branch of the Cinematograph Exhibitors' Association opposed Sunday opening. On 20th December, 1939, and on various other dates, they affirmed and reaffirmed a resolution stating that the Members of the Scottish Branch at the present time did not wish Sunday opening. In my own constituency the Magistrates called together representatives of the trade and asked whether they would, with a view to helping the war effort, yield this point and in this way raise funds for the war effort. After consideration the trade replied, as was stated in the "Airdrie and Coatbridge Advertiser" of 8th February last:
After full discussion the representatives of the cinema managers expressed themselves as unanimously opposed, on principle, to the opening of the picture houses on Sunday.
Then the military authorities stepped in, and the General Officer Commanding the Scottish Command requested the Scottish Branch of the Cinematograph Exhibitors' Association:
To open the cinemas on Sunday with a view towards helping in a solution in the many problems facing the authorities under war conditions.
When it was so put to them the cinema trade—and we can hardly imagine them adopting another course—surrendered in this matter, but insisted on two conditions. The first was that opening should be on a, commercial basis, and the second was that, whatever priority might be given to the Forces, no citizen should be turned away. That is recorded in the resolution of the Scottish branch, and in a letter to the local branches on 22nd October this year there were the words in Article III: "Opening to be at ordinary prices."
What were the reasons behind this change of attitude and practice? First of all it was alleged by some that the Church was not doing all that could be done for the troops. I am not prepared to say that they were, but I have, perhaps, better opportunities than most of knowing


what is being done by the Churches, because I am an itinerant parson going from pulpit to pulpit on Sundays, and if time had allowed I could have shown at length what has been done by individual churches, groups of churches, Service Clubs and so on. Secondly, on last Tuesday a serious moral problem was debated in this House, a problem which has been confronting local authorities as well as the churches in Scotland. It was thought that if they could take away from the streets and stations the officers and rank and file, a good deal of the evil might vanish. That is said to have been the motive.
It cannot be said that in this regard much success attended the effort. In the report, as given in the Press, of the results on the first two Sundays on which there was opening of the cinemas in the. City of Glasgow, the highest percentage of the Forces to the whole audience was 41 per cent. There were two cases given where the percentage was 17 per cent., and one case where the Forces represented only 10 per cent. The House might wish to know the summary of the "Glasgow Herald" of the results in that first fortnight of the opening. It appeared in a leading article in the "Glasgow Herald" on 30th October: The Sunday cinema scheme, they said, had failed in its purpose and that because, in their view, there had not been sufficient opening in the centre of the city. But thirdly behind all this, with opinion as it is in Scotland and the aversion to the opening of cinemas on Sunday, there was the fact that unless some pressure were exercised by the military it was not likely that, save in certain cities and districts, cinemas would be opened at all on that day. So they took advantage by bringing in the full weight of military authority, exerted directly on the cinema trade, and indirectly on the local authorities, to accomplish this Sunday opening of cinemas.
I am making no reflection on the action of the authorities, because they are given very wide powers both under general Acts and under local Acts. Least of all am I making any reflection on any action of the Scottish Office in this matter. They have not been called to appear in the matter. The action has come from the source I have named, and so far from blaming the Scottish Office, the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, or the

Secretary of State himself, so far as the Sabbath question is concerned, I can only give them great praise, because in the action they have taken with regard to the bona fide traveller in Scotland, the action that has been extended to various counties and is increasingly being extended, they have done more to preserve and honour and increase the quiet and sanctity of Sunday than any other action that I have known for a long time. But I look at this point. When the military make a request, in many cases it is equal to a command. When Mr. R. B. Peat, a cinema owner and a former president of the Airdrie and Coatbridge Cinema Managers' Association, made a protest, at a meeting of the Scottish branch of the Cinema Exhibitors' Association on 26th October, 1942, against the opening of cinemas on Sundays on a commercial basis, he was promptly answered in these words:
Mr. Peat's cinema can be requisitioned with ten hours' notice from the military not only for entertainment but also for other purposes.
That whole procedure in my view is a violation and a fettering of free and full local democracy.
What is behind it all? I was at the trouble to read in the Press some of the general reasons given for this change, and I read: "Glasgow is a dreary place on Sunday"; "the drabness of Glasgow on Sunday nights"; "the gloomy Scottish Sunday." I have heard in this House of the gloomy Scottish Sunday. Of course there are people who think that anything connected with churches or with religion must be gloomy. There are some people who have dwelt so long, to use Bunyan's language, in the dark dungeons of Doubting Castle that they cannot know of the radiance that shines for those who walk on the King's highway. There are spiritual as well as material joys. Robert Burns in one of his later letters, speaking on this subject of spiritual as compared with the material joys, says:
These axe no idle pleasures, they are real delights; and I ask what delights, among the sons of men are superior, not to say equal to them. And they have this precious vast addition that conscious virtue stamps them for her own, and lays hold of them to bring herself into the presence of a witnessing and approving God.
To go back to the allegation of the gloomy Scottish Sabbath, I own myself a child of


the Scottish gloom, and the Scottish Sabbath. I never knew till I came to this House that I had been dwelling so long under a cloud, or had been so long in bondage. There were two characteristics of the Scottish Sabbath as I knew it. The first was that there was no visiting from farm to farm on a Sunday. If we saw a man making for our homestead, we at once concluded that there was illness of man or beast and that some help was needed. There was no ordinary visiting. The other thing was that we were told to sit down and read a good book. That meant a religious book. [An HON. MEMBER: "Progress and Poverty."] That is in a way a religious book. It was not in our category but I know of no book which has more apt or more far-reaching quotations than "Progress and Poverty" from portions of the Scripture itself. I would rather for my purpose take another book—the "Scots Worthies"—written by a humble peasant, John Howie, in my own native parish, which has won merit both for its quaint style and for its amazing historical research.

It being the hour appointed for the Interruption of Business, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put:

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. Pym]

Mr. Barr: If I may resume, that is how I was brought up. The day came when I proceeded to college. I went up to Glasgow University, in the words of Robert Pollok, "ambitious of no second place." I was engaged in keen competition; but no matter what examinations were before me, every Saturday evening I gathered my university textbooks together, and laid them aside, and never on any occasion opened them till Monday. You may call it narrow, you may count it artificial, but certainly I did not suffer by giving my mind a complete rest on one day in seven. If I may make a still more personal allusion, I have two shelves in my library that I value above all my other possessions. There are 34 volumes bound in the well-known rich Glasgow University binding, 34 volumes of class prizes that I won at Glasgow University. Perhaps the distance of time may excuse my saying that it was something like a record for a lad in the Arts Course at Glasgow University 60 years

ago. At any rate they were all secured in strict observance of the Sabbath law.
I did not suffer for it and so I pass on to this, that if an individual does not suffer, neither does a nation suffer for its observance of this law. In a passage of sublime beauty, one of the prophets of Israel gives the assurance that, if a nation will honour the Sabbath law, it will ride on the high places of the earth. The day has gone by, I trust, when we desire to see any nation, least of all our own, riding roughshod over other nations. We do not want that, but in all that makes real greatness and moral leadership and enriching service, in all that makes up the true grandeur of nations, the nation that will observe the Sabbath law and the moral laws that lie beside it, in the best sense of the word, will ride on the high places of the earth till the end of time. I will give an illustration that may be in the minds of some hon. Members from a speech made in the House of Commons by Macaulay on the Ten Hours Bill on 22nd May, 1846. He was answering a previous speaker in the Debate, who had argued that if only Britain had not observed the day of rest, she would have produced far more, and she would have been a far more formidable competitor in the markets of the world. What was Macaulay's answer to this?
The arguments of my hon. Friend irresistibly lead to this conclusion that if, during the last three centuries, the Sunday had not been observed as a day of rest, we should have been a far richer and a far more highly civilised people than we are now, and that the labouring classes especially would have been far better off than at present. But does he, does any hon. Member of the House, seriously believe that this would have been the case? For my own part, I have not the smallest doubt that if we and our ancesters had, during the past three centuries, worked just as hard on the Sunday as on the weekdays, we should have been at this moment a poorer people and a less civilised people than we are; that there would have been less production than there has been; that the wages of the labourer would have been lower than they are; and that some other nation would now have been making cotton stuffs and woollen stuffs and cutlery for the whole world.
We all know that it is only the folly of mankind that at this moment prevents us sending our choice and coveted finished products to the markets of the world. We are confident too that under a newly constructed society in the days to come, with a freer exchange of goods than we have ever known between land and land, we shall again be sending our cotton stuffs,


our woollen stuffs and our cutlery to all the ends of the earth.
The Divine Creator has inscribed this law not only on Tables of Stone. It is written deep and clear on all Nature. It rules in all amusements, in all entertainments and in all sport. It is not perhaps known by hon. Members that in Scotland we had two golfers, father and son, old Tom Morris and young Tom Morris, who had achievements in the golfing world that I do not think have been equalled in any other country. Eight times the two of them together won the Open Championship of Great Britain. Young Tom Morris won it four times, three times in succession. On his monument in St. Andrews there is a tribute composed by the well-known writer, A. K. H. Boyd. He died on Christmas Day, 1875, at the age of 24, and this is the tribute on his tombstone:
Deeply regretted by numerous friends and all golfers,
He thrice in succession won the champion belt
And held it without rivalry, and yet without envy,
His many amicable qualities
Being no less acknowledged than his golfing achievements.
Old Tom Morris kept the green at the famous St. Andrews for many years, and in days when Sunday golf was almost unknown in Scotland he saw two American players come out to tee their balls on the Sunday morning. He was after them in a moment. "What are you up to, boys?" he asked. "Oh," they said, "we are just going to have a game." He replied, "Well, if you don't have the sense to know that you need a rest, I know that the greens need a rest." Yes, Sir, all Nature needs a rest. The animal world needs a rest.
On the Seventh Day thou shalt rest that thine ox and thine ass may rest.
All machinery needs a rest. Cinemas and Theatres, actors and operators all need a rest.
"But," someone will say, "surely you are forgetting there is a war on, and we cannot recognise all those niceties of law." Someone might even quote from Cicero's "Pro Milone":
Laws are silent in the midst of arms.
But here is a law that refuses to be silent even in the midst of arms. During the last war a special committee was appointed, consisting of three well known men, Sir

George Newman, Sir Thomas Barlow and my right hon. Friend the Member for the Platting Division of Manchester (Mr. Clynes), and this was their finding, their historic pronouncement:
Evidence before the committee has led them strongly to hold that, if the maximum output is to be secured and maintained for any length of time, a weekly period of rest must be allowed. Except for quite short periods, continuous work, in their view, is a profound mistake, and does not pay. Output is not increased.
Nor is it different in this war. The Select Committee on National Expenditure, appointed by this House, said in their Fifteenth Report, issued on 13th May last year, dealing with aircraft firms:
The majority of the firms have stated explicitly that on balance Sunday work is of no value.
In their Seventeenth Report, issued on 10th July last year, on "Labour Problems in Filling Factories," they said:
Sunday work should be abolished except for maintenance of plant, or in real emergencies.
Those declarations of the last war and this ought to be borne in mind, and must be inscribed on any new order we may seek to set up.
There are only two other aspects to which I must refer. Since I came to this House I have often been struck by the unwearied labours that men put forth to secure Sunday closing, or better weekday hours, in their own trade. I think of my hon. Friend the Member for Wednesbury (Mr. Banfield) and his labours for better weekday conditions and the abolition of Sunday work in the baking trade. My hon. Friend who was here a moment ago, the hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Leslie), has laboured in the same way. But perhaps I am making somewhat of a mistake, in singling out hon. Members in the present House of Commons. I will go further back. When I first came to this House there was a Member, a man of very frail body but of a great determination of mind, who was engaged week in, week out, month in, month out, year in, year out, in securing Sunday closing by means of the Hairdressers' and Barbers' Shops (Sunday Closing) Bill, no easy task for a Private Member, as we know. I remember well that day when at last he succeeded in overcoming all the obstacles; the Third Reading of the Bill was given in this House, and we gathered


round to congratulate him. When the Bill became law, on 1st August, 1930, the members of his trade throughout the country thought that there should be some special celebration here in London. They asked me to go and pay the tribute, which I was glad to do. There was a gathering worthy of the occasion. Men representing the hairdressing trades were there from all over the country—but there was no James Stewart, only a vacant chair drawn in where he should have sat. To the cause of Sunday closing the then hon. Member for St. Rollox had given the last full measure of devotion. His frail body and his completed task he laid down at one and the same time. But what is the good of men spending themselves for their own trades, if there are others planning vast schemes of Sunday pleasure and bringing in new forms of Sunday labour?
What boots it, at one gate to make defence, And at another to let in the foe?
I have only one other allusion, and it is to the great poet of the Sabbath in Scotland, James Grahame. I have often wondered whether more to admire his stirring and majestic poem, or the prose preface with which he sent it forward to the world. The preface contained these words:
He who has seen three score and ten years, has lived ten years of Sabbaths. It is this beneficent institution that forms the grand bulwark of poverty against the encroachments of capital. The labouring classes sell their time; the rich are the buyers; at least, they are the chief buyers…Six days of the week are thus disposed of already. If the seventh were in the market, it would find purchasers, too. The abolition of the Sabbath would, in truth, be equivalent to a sentence, adjudging to the rich the services of the poor for life.
Yes, I would emphasise those words "the grand bulwark of poverty against the encroachments of capital." I Stand here, in this closing appeal, with all the eagerness, earnestness and energy I can command, appealing to this House that, in its schemes of reconstruction, such as we have been considering, it will' carry over from the old order into the new what is highest and best in the old. I would appeal, if I may, to my own countrymen, that they will stand steadfast by their well proved and cherished traditions. I would venture to appeal even to the Scottish Churches, too many of which in these times are showing themselves weak-kneed, even on this vital question. I would appeal to all whom it

may concern that they do not stand idly by while the Scottish Command, in a grave intrusion, would lay in the dust, badly battered as it already is, this grand bulwark of poverty against the ever-increasing encroachments of capital, and against the ever growing usurpations of military power.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Westwood): The common sense, sincerity, high idealism and religious fervour in the speech to Which we have just listened have, I am sure, appealed to everyone who has had the pleasure of listening to that splendid speech. It is important that this House should realise that it is not merely the expression of the views of the hon. Member for Coatbridge (Mr. Barr), but that he is expressing the views, in that wonderful language he has used to-day, of thousands of Scottish men and women, a view that is sincerely held by thousands of our people in Scotland, that the Sabbath shall not be broken but the Sabbath shall be kept as of old. I am perfectly sure, having said that, the hon. Member for Coatbridge does not expect me—in fact if he did it would be impossible for me to do so with the limited time at my disposal—to deal in detail, or at any length, with the points he has raised. He has already pointed out that he has no complaint against the Scottish Office. We do not control the opening of cinemas. That power is delegated to the local authorities in Scotland, democratically elected bodies, the power of licensing the cinemas and applying conditions, as they can apply them, to the opening of these cinemas. The existing law is that we cannot, as a Scottish Office, interfere. That was made perfectly clear—and I know the hon. Member will agree with me—in a letter which was sent to him dated 22nd October, giving the clear, legal position so far as Scotland is concerned. There are 600 cinemas in Scotland, and there are only 47 that are open for Sunday performances in accordance with requests that have been made, the 47 being controlled by 34 local authorities. There are 128 local authorities in Scotland that have the power to license cinemas, so there is not either a general demand nor yet is there general agreement about, shall I say, the general opening of places for Sunday entertainment. Quite frankly, speaking for


myself, I hope the day will never arrive, so far as Scotland is concerned, when that will be general. But demands have arisen because of the war and because of war conditions. In some cases chief constables are appealing to their local authorities to get the Service men and women off the streets and into the cinemas. Seven chief constables think it would be wise, in the interests of the Services themselves, to open the cinemas. But, despite the appeals which have been made, only 34 authorities have granted the requests, and only 47 cinemas, out of 600, open on Sundays.
My time is up. I thought I would give these facts. There are tens of thousands of people in Scotland who want to see

the Sabbath honoured as it should be—and I can speak with the same fervour as that of the hon. Member for my own home, where there is always a special emphasis on Sunday observance, and where if I fall by the roadside sometimes my good wife is always ready to call me to book and to tell me that it is the Sabath—I am proud that there is no general demand for the opening of places of entertainment on Sundays. But there is no responsibility on the Scottish Office in this matter; it is entirely the responsibility of the local authorities in Scotland, and they are responsible to the public in their particular areas.

Question, "That this House do now adjourn," put, and agreed to.